Sorry, TLC.
Imagine you’re carrying a bucket…
Nothing special, just the kind you’d wash the car with. Someone filled it for you, and you’ve been carrying it around ever since.
Here’s the thing about this water: it’s precious to you, you need it daily, everybody does; it’s life. Every drink keeps you going. So, of course, you look after it.
But your bucket has a small leak. Nothing dramatic, just a slow drip from a crack near the bottom. You can’t fix it, and most days you barely notice it. But every time you look down, the level’s a little lower than you remember.
So what do you do?
You become rather cautious. You start noticing who has water and who doesn’t. When someone offers to pour a bit into your bucket, you hold it out gratefully. When someone asks for some of yours, you hesitate. Will they give it back? Have they given me any before? You pour a little for the people you know will return the favour, and you keep the rest close.
It makes perfect sense. You want your bucket as full as possible, so you’re always on the lookout for people who’ll give you water, and you’re always rationing what you give out.
Now zoom out. Everyone around you is doing exactly the same thing. Everyone’s carrying a bucket, every bucket leaks, and everyone is watching everyone else’s water level and pouring carefully, sparingly, strategically.
And all the while, every bucket around you is slowly getting emptier.
We are leaky buckets
You’ve probably heard some version of this metaphor before. Gary Chapman talks about an emotional “love tank” in The Five Love Languages. There’s a whole shelf of kids’ books about “filling someone’s bucket” with kind words. I’ve heard counsellors describe separate buckets for purpose, for worth, for feeling wanted. You could have ten buckets if you like.
I think they’re all describing the same thing. We long to be loved. We long to feel valued, to be known, to have an identity that holds. Call it love, call it worth, call it significance; it’s the water in the bucket. It’s a treasured resource, and it can be poured out in all sorts of ways: kindness, patience, attention, time, a meal dropped round when someone’s sick.
And just by virtue of living, we leak. A hard week at work, a sleepless night with a sick kid, a friendship that’s gone a bit cold, a comment someone made that you can’t stop replaying. The level drops before you’ve intentionally poured out a single drop.
So we get protective. Very protective. We guard the contents of our buckets like our lives depend on it, because some days it feels like they do.
I know I do. I can be remarkably selfish at times with my own energy, attention and affection when I feel drained, or that they haven’t reciprocated.
Even the pagans do that
Have you ever been part of a secret Santa exchange? Everyone agrees on a budget. Everyone spends exactly that amount. Half the time you’ve mentioned to each other what you want anyway.
So what actually happened? You bought yourself a present, through someone else. They bought themselves one through you. Everyone walks away even, and maybe, somewhere in the mix, someone felt nice for a moment.
Sheldon Cooper nailed this in The Big Bang Theory. Penny tells him she’s getting him a Christmas present and he’s genuinely distressed, because now he has to work out exactly what it’s worth and match it:
“You haven’t given me a gift. You’ve given me an obligation.”
Taken to its logical end, you just keep swapping perfectly matched presents back and forth, year after year, until one of you dies. Then it’s finally uneven. We laugh because it’s ridiculous, but there’s also an uncomfortable truth in there too.
Jesus saw this long before sitcoms did:
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”
Luke 6:32-35 ESV
To get back the same amount. That’s the Christmas exchange. That’s the bucket economy. I’ll pour some of mine into yours, as long as you pour some of yours back into mine.
Running low
But what do we do when the level gets low?
We talk about needing “me time.” Needing to recharge, decompress, get away from people for a while. And in a secular sense I think that’s exactly what’s happening. We’re either going off to find the one person who reliably fills our bucket back up, or we’re sitting alone and hoping that, through some kind of universal osmosis, the level slowly creeps back up if we just stop pouring for a bit.
Now, I want to be fair here, because rest is good. God built a Sabbath into creation. Jesus himself withdrew from the crowds:
“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”
Mark 1:35 ESV
So I’m not telling you to cancel your quiet evening. But notice where Jesus went when he withdrew. He didn’t go to be empty. He went to the Father. His “me time” was actually “him time.” He didn’t wait for osmosis. He went to the source.
Rocks in the bucket
There’s a whole other article hiding in here about consumerism (and I’ll probably write it one day), but let me at least touch on it.
Almost all marketing is making one promise: buy this, and your bucket will be fuller. The car, the renovation, the holiday, the new phone, the outfit. And the thing is, it sort of works. Drop a rock in a bucket and the water level goes up. You look down and it seems fuller.
But there’s no more water in there. There’s actually less room for it. You’ve just made the emptiness harder to see.
God put it more bluntly through Isaiah:
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”
Isaiah 55:1-2 ESV
Why do we do that? Why do we keep spending on the things that don’t satisfy, when the thing that does satisfy is free?
Broken cisterns
Leaky buckets? God described us as leaky buckets two and a half thousand years ago.
“for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
Jeremiah 2:13 ESV
And look at the two evils. The first is walking away from the fountain. The second is that we then go and dig our own containers, work hard at them, carve them out of rock, and they don’t even hold water. We’ve swapped a spring for a hole in the ground with a crack in it.
That’s not just a diagnosis of Israel. That’s a diagnosis of you & me.
The fountain
So what’s the alternative to a leaky bucket? It’s not a better bucket. It’s a better source.
Jesus doesn’t describe himself as someone who’ll top you up a bit when you’re low. He describes himself as a spring. A fountain. Living water.
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14 ESV
“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’”
John 7:37-38 ESV
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
John 6:35 ESV
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28 ESV
Notice what happens in John 7. The water doesn’t just fill you. It flows out of you. Rivers of it.
David knew this too:
“They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”
Psalm 36:8-9 ESV
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
Psalm 23:5 ESV
My cup overflows. Not “my cup is adequately maintained.” Overflows.
Plumbed in
Here’s the rub. Here’s the line I really wanted to get to.
As Christians, we have access to the source. We live right next to the waterfall. We can hear it, feel its spray, and reach out and touch it. We effectively have plumbing; in a world chasing puddles we’re drinking form the source.
“and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:5 ESV
Poured into our hearts. It’s already happening. The tap is already on.
And yet what do we do? We hover over our buckets. We guard them like our lives depend on it. We cup our hands over the top so nothing evaporates, and we watch anyone who comes near in case they take some. We ration our kindness and our patience and our time like the supply might run out.
Jesus says: come to me, and I will satisfy you. Your sense of self, your identity, will be filled. Your sense of purpose will be met. Your need to be loved will be overflowing, because I gave my life for you.
And we say, “Ah, no, not that.”
“But if my spouse could just love me a bit more. If my family would just do this. If my friends would just notice. Then I wouldn’t feel so lonely. Then I wouldn’t feel so empty.”
I’m not pointing a finger here. I’ve felt all of those before. 🙈
We stand next to a waterfall and wait for someone to give us water…
The oil stopped when the jars ran out
It doesn’t take time to fill a bucket under a waterfall. It takes some intent, maybe. You have to walk over and hold it out. But once you do, it fills faster than you could ever empty it. You could go and splash that water on everyone and everything around you, all day, and you could still end your day with a full bucket.
Think about the widow at Zarephath. There’s a famine, she’s down to her last handful of flour and a splash of oil, and she’s planning to make one last meal for herself and her son and then die. Elijah asks her to make him some bread first.
“For thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth.’ And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.”
1 Kings 17:14-16 ESV
She gave from the bottom of the jar, and the jar never emptied. Not from her own strength, but from God.
There’s another widow a few years later, this time with Elisha, who’s told to borrow every empty jar she can from her neighbours and start pouring from her one little jug of oil. She pours and pours, jar after jar. And then this:
“When the vessels were full, she said to her son, ‘Bring me another vessel.’ And he said to her, ‘There is not another.’ Then the oil stopped flowing.”
2 Kings 4:6 ESV
The oil didn’t stop because the supply ran out. It stopped because she ran out of jars.
The limit was never the source. The limit was how many containers she could find.
Please don’t hear “stuff”
I want to be really clear, because I know how this can sound. I’m not talking about material things. I couldn’t care less about the oil as a commodity. The point it NOT that God will keep your pantry stocked or your bank account topped up.
Go back to the merchant:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Matthew 13:44-46 ESV
He sold everything. Every other thing he owned got poured out, and he did it in his joy, because he’d found the one thing worth more than all of it. He tipped all the rocks out of his bucket so it could be completely filled with the good stuff.
That’s the overflowing bucket I care about. Not more stuff. More of him, so much that the rest of it becomes easy to give away.
Lift your eyes
It’s too easy to spend our whole lives staring down into our own buckets, checking the level, worrying about the leak, eyeing off everyone else’s.
What if we just lifted our eyes?
The waterfall is right there. You can hear it from where you’re standing. You don’t need to earn it, and you don’t need to find the one person who’ll finally fill you up. You just need to walk over and hold out your bucket. Then pour it on everyone around you, because there’s more where that came from.
TLC’s advice was to play it safe and stay with what you know. They had it backwards, because they didn’t know this waterfall.
So here’s my challenge, to you and to me: Who are hoping will fill your bucket? Who has needed water from you bucket but you’ve withheld because of a misplaced sense of scarcity? Because they didn’t return water to you?
Perhaps we should go chasing waterfalls after all.