Grounded (Friday Devotional)

“Seek the Lord and His strength, seek His presence continually.”

- 1 Chronicles 16:11

Three days after the baby shower, the balloons were starting to look pretty pitiful.

Let me back up for a second. Last Saturday, Lindsey and I (well, really Lindsey, her mom, and her grandmommy) hosted a shower at our house for her cousin, who’s expecting her first child. The shower was by any measure a big success—everybody had a great time, we didn’t run out of food, and the mom-to-be walked away with plenty of gifts.

The trouble came when we started cleaning everything up, and our son told us he wanted to leave the decorative balloons up. We shrugged and thought, sure, what’s the harm? The next day, when we asked Andrew if he was ready to take them down now, he said he still liked them and wanted them to stay up. Same story the next day. But by Tuesday, the helium had passed its expiration date, and balloons that had once risen to the ceiling now lay limply on the floor.

So when Andrew came out of his room that morning and saw them on the ground, he cocked his head and asked why they weren’t in the air anymore. I explained to him that the balloons had been able to stay up because of something like called helium, and that the balloons were all out of it and would need to go in the trash now. Andrew looked even more confused by my explanation and my solution. His response: “They don’t need to go in the trash. They just need to be filled up again!”

We all feel like grounded balloons at times, brought down to earth by stress, sadness, and sin. Maybe there was once a time when you soared proudly, when it felt like God was with you in everything you did. But now you just feel weak, defeated, and alone, devoid of passion or purpose.

In such times, God assures us that what we need is not to consign ourselves to the trash can, but to seek His strength. When you come to Him continually—not just in crisis, but also in calm—and place your faith in Him, you find a comfort and a peace that cannot be found elsewhere. Life is difficult and has a way of bringing you low, but what Andrew said about the balloons is true in a spiritual sense for people too: you don’t belong in the trash. You just need to be filled up.