Pouring Oil

     There is a story about a man in ancient China who sold oil from village to village. The women brought their oil jars out to the street where he would dip a ladle into his large jar and pour the oil in a thin stream into their smaller jars, without spilling a drop. One day he came upon a group of archers bragging about their skills as marksmen. They made fun of the man's simple job. He showed them what he did for a living, then invited them to try it for themselves. None of them could do it without spilling. I forget the moral of the story. Maybe you can figure it out.
     I do, however, find myself stopping in the middle of my prayers because the Psalms keep talking about fear. In the same passages--sometimes in the same line--the writers talk about the great gift of God's love and in the same breath tell us we must fear God. How do we love and fear God at the same time without becoming dysfunctional? Figuring something must have gotten lost in the translation, I looked it up at BlueLetterBible.org. Translated directly from scriptures, the Hebrew word "fear" means... fear.
     Sometimes it pays to keep asking. Looking down the list of definitions I found, near the very end, another word that is sometimes use to speak of fear. It translates as "pour" in English. Pour, as in pour oil from a big bottle into a smaller bottle, without spilling.

     Whenever I have to pour something, like dark red wine on a table set with crystal and white linen, or when I pour paint into a pan hanging from a stepladder over the living room carpet, or even when I pour gasoline into the little tank on my lawn mower there's always a jolt of nerves because I know the consequence of making a mistake, the disaster that comes with spilling. It's fear. I'm careful at work walking with a full cup of coffee. I nearly freeze when the cough medicine is in the spoon and the wiggling child is across the bed. And I'll probably never be a Eucharistic minister because I'm terrified of dropping the sacred bread or the cup of blessed wine. The fear of spilling is with me in every endeavor that involves transporting something important from one place to another outside of a secure container. And when you stop and think about it, there's nothing so loose-lidded as human devotion.

    I haven't written for awhile because God has been "pouring it on", or perhaps I should say "pouring it in..." He has been pouring his grace into my soul through the tiny opening which is my fearful heart. I for my part must navigate the stumbling blocks of life with my eyes clamped shut and what feels like both hands in my pockets. The concordance writers explain that the kind of fear we are talking about in Scripture recognizes both the wonder of God and the impossibility of our human hearts ever being adequate to his purpose. He wants to live from our hearts. But we do everything contrary to love. We cling to everything that is opposed to His nature, and try as we might--praying and longing for transformation--we cannot grow new hearts. It has to come from him.

    Fear of the Lord they say is the beginning of wisdom. All I can do is bow to the One who pours the oil.