And I Will Fill It

You might call it an insignificant phrase. I wouldn’t. It was hiding there in the Psalms: “Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.” In light of what had been going round in my head for the past several days, it was particularly interesting.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “If she (or he, or them) didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all”? Yet Solomon said that time and chance happen to us all. Why, then, do some people seem to have better opportunities? Why do some people wind up having what they say they want, and others not? I’ve concluded that it’s all about preparation.

Keep in mind that I’m referring to a statement about opening one’s mouth. That’s preparation.

Years ago I wrote a song about a flower that is sometimes called the Surprise Lily. It looks like a daffodil on steroids when the leaves burst through the soil in the spring … but then, nothing happens. The huge leaves shrivel and die, and nothing remains. But hold on! Don’t go planting another flower there. Leave that space empty, because after those leaves are completely dead, one day a naked stem (the flower’s other name is Naked Lady) forces its way through the bare soil, and there you have your beautiful lily. The point? We must leave room, we must have an empty space, we must have a hungry heart, we must have an open mouth … in order take advantage of the opportunities that come our way.

I know a woman who wants to go places with her singing voice, but when she had a wide open recording opportunity, she couldn’t take it. She had no space in her life for it. Recording would have meant changing her lifestyle, and, in general, if you haven’t already changed your lifestyle to make room in advance, before the opportunity arises, you won’t do it when the opportunity shows up, either.

Empty space and hunger are neither of them socially acceptable. We don’t like or want to be hungry, so as soon as we become aware of a hunger, we rush to find something to “eat.” It may not in fact be at all what we really want, but … anything is better than being hungry. And, oh, what people say if you have some empty space in your schedule! “Busy” is socially acceptable—even to ourselves—but some empty space, devoted to seeking the Lord for the right thing to fill it, is lazy or wasteful or worse.

But if you’re not hungry and empty, why would you open your mouth? The well-satisfied man, Proverbs says, won’t even eat honey, the sweetest thing to the tongue. Only the hungry and empty man will open his mouth. And when he does … oh, wow, the Lord says He’ll fill it.

We tend to work to try to meet our own needs, or we’ll try to cover up our needs. But don’t. Just open your mouth.

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