By 
At dinnertime, my 3-year-old son came to me with a complaint. His cup was dirty and he wanted a new one. Our dishwashing machine seems to leave a little more grime than it should of late. I wandered to the cabinet, grabbed another cup, and dumped the contents of the glass from one to the other.
The second cup was much larger and its emptiness immediately caught my attention. The nearly full first cup didn’t fill the second cup halfway.
Pay Attention!
Sometimes the Holy Spirit bangs me on the head as if to say, “Pay Attention!” This was one of those times. God wanted to notice something about the cups. My mind immediately went back to a time many years ago when I prayed what I thought was a brilliant prayer because it was inspired by St. Teresa of Avila. She’s a prayer master, so she should know something about this prayer thing.
I prayed, “Lord, dilate my heart, make it larger so I can contain more of Your love.” This seemed like a great idea but was immediately followed by a time of tremendous spiritual dryness. The joy and consolation I experienced in prayer dried up overnight.
I never really understood it and it was a very disturbing, almost discouraging, experience. But looking back on it, I could see that it was a time of considerable personal growth.
This image of the two cups gave me an interpretive key to help me to understand this experience.
Growing pains.
I made my fervent prayer for growth when my heart was small and hard. Back then, the graces that I received in prayer seemed almost overwhelming. This was God’s gift to me because it kept me coming back to the well. But then I prayed for God to expand my heart a thousandfold.
When my heart could only hold a cup of grace, a cup and a half of grace overflowed and I thought that I had reached the heights of holiness. I was sure I’d already reached at least the 6th mansion, if not the 7th. (If you haven’t read St. Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, that means that you’ve become a saint.)
Then God said, “Sure, that’s a great prayer. I’ll happily grow your heart a thousandfold.” A cup and a half of grace barely coats the inside of a 62-gallon container. So instead of feeling full of the Holy Spirit and like a spiritual super-ninja, I entered this incredibly difficult time of dryness while I waited for the grace to fill it back up again.
The Gift of a New Wine Skin
Jesus told us that Our Father doesn’t ration His gift of the Holy Spirit. We can always receive more. The lives of the apostles testify to this. After the resurrection, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Yet again, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down again on the Apostles and those with them in the upper room. God wanted to give them more of His Holy Spirit.
God in His wisdom won’t try to pour 62 gallons of Living Water into a jelly jar. It would spill all over the floor. First, He expanded my heart and then He filled it. And the filling wasn’t a big tsunami accompanied by tongues of flame. It was a more gradual thing. It took years because it meant learning how to love.
Jesus snatched me out of the darkness and saved me from complete madness. If you want to hear more of that story, check out Demoniac, now available on Amazon.
