Empty

Its been a long day filled with drama and the unexpected. After finally getting home, my wife asked if I would take her car and fill the gas tank. It was on empty. I headed out toward the the gas station thinking, "I hope I don't run out of petro!" Well, I made it. I swiped my card and began fueling. After finishing the "honey do," I started the engine and turned up the Alabama CD that roared through the speakers (roaring even in the absence of surround sound!).
As I pulled out onto the highway, I noticed a building across the street that was empty. I drove on a bit, I saw another, and then another. I passed a few signs that read, "For Lease" or "For Sale" or "Ready to Occupy." Everywhere I looked (or so it seemed), I was faced with an overwhelming presence of empty.

And then, staring at me in silence, was the largest empty of all. For more than a fifteen years (after previously being empty for several years) the building I looked into had teemed with life, voices, shouts of hope, and exclamations of promise. It has resonnated with new beginnings and new starts. Grounded in the fertile soil of grace, renewal, and regerration it had been a place where the carpenter's tools had hewn new life out of what to many seemed to be the scrap lumber heap of life. But, on this night it was empty. The lamppost was dark. No flame flickered. I stood in silence, unmoving -- as the silence stared back at me, swallowing me, engulfing me, consuming me. I quickly closed my eyes, shook my head in disbelief, and re-opened my startled eyes. Still I saw empty ... empty ... empty.

I could no longer stand. I had to sit on the curb. My legs lost their usefulness. I sat. With eyes closed. I began to see faces. The faces of homeless men, women, and children. They, too, knew the sunami of empty. The saw empty when they looked in a mirror. They knew empty in their stomachs. They knew empty in their pockets. They felt empty in the depths of their being. They were often met with empty stares or glares from those they passed. Like the building they were swallowed in empty.

I got into my car asking "why" and "how could it be? I started the engine and pulled onto an empty road, looking at empty in my rearview mirror and listening to empty on the car radio. Then it came to me, empty is matter of choice! Empty is the net outcome of specific decisions. It doesn't matter whether its the car's fuel tank, a building, or a person -- empty is the natural result of choices that ignore consequences.

You are given a field to play on. It remains empty if you are not willing to play on it. You are given a resource to nurture and cherish, it becomes empty if the resources are not replenished. You enter a relationship with smiles and promise. It becomes empty when you no longer smile and promises are broken. You are given a mission, an opportunity and you stumble on empty because you loose focus. You are given the opportunity to explore, but you are lost in a cavernous, cave of empty because you lost your light. Question -- are you running on empty? If so, you soon won't be running. You will be like the building I saw -- stark, silent, lifeless, empty.
God, help me to stay filled that I might never be empty. Allow me to look into another's eyes and fill the empty with hope and promise. Allow me to walk streets smoothered in empty and leave behind the fullness of grace and goodness; the promise of new beginnings and new starts. Allow my voice to fill the empty spaces in the hearts of others with refreshing, renewing, resonnating lyrics of joy, encouragement, and praise. May the sound of the shofar fill the empty spaces in the lives of homeless men, women, and children (and the empty spaces in the lives of those blessed with homes, too!).

May the Gateway Center be a refueling station for those running on empty. May the Gateway Center be a place where people can say, "Fill'er up!" May the Gateway Center be a place where the lights are on ... and when we drive away, looking back we see new starts, new beginnings, new lives ... never, ever, never empty!