At the end of every school year, when I was a child, we had a field day. There was an assortment of individual and team activities, including the sack race, spoon and egg race, water balloon launch, three-legged race, and much more.
One particular game that sticks in my memory is the bucket challenge. Each class would line up in a straight line. The object of the game is transport water from a filled container at one end of the line to an empty tank on the other end of the line by passing a small bucket person-to-person.
The game started, and water sloshed everywhere, shirts and shorts got soaked, and empty tubs began to fill.
The problem was that my class had fallen way behind. So, I set out to change our circumstances.
Instead of waiting for each person to pass the bucket down the line, I ran to the beginning of the line and filled it, running it back and dumping it in the filling tub. I repeated this process several times until our teacher stopped me.
She said, “Instead of allowing us to work together as a team to fill this container, you have emptied our chances.”
Life is kind of like a bucket. We are either walking around with a full, or partially full, or empty bucket.
One of our children’s favorite books is, “Have you filled a bucket today?”. The author invites readers to see that we are given the opportunity each day to fill our bucket and the buckets of others, or to empty our buckets and the buckets of others. Our choices and character either acts as a filler or emptier of buckets.
Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, writes that they too have the opportunity to fill their bucket.
They can choose to put into their buckets anger, malice, slander, and other such things. But the reality is that such things empty our buckets of life.
Instead, they could choose compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and the like. Such things give us life.
We are beginning a new conversation, “Brimming Buckets,” in which we will navigate what it looks like to fill our buckets and the buckets of others with the way of Jesus.
As a daily reminder to either fill or empty buckets, and to remind us of our ongoing conversation, each person will receive a small bucket to carry around. We challenge you to carry this bucket with you each day as an encouraging and empowering reminder of Jesus’ invitation.
If you miss a Sunday, catch up with the conversation by: 1) Subscribing to the podcast through the iTunes or podcast app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ubc-baton-rouge/id1403968658?mt=2 2) Stream it through the website: https://www.ubc-br.org/podcast
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