Little Wren Writes

I’ve spent much of my life living with expectations. Some belonged to other people. Many belonged to me.

I expected life to make sense. I expected hard work to be rewarded. I expected grief to become easier after enough time had passed. I expected to be better at saving money. I expected healing to be quicker. I expected faith to feel stronger. I expected all vegetables to taste terrible, all the time. I expected myself to cope better than I often did.

Perhaps you’ve carried expectations like that too. Not unrealistic ones. Just quiet assumptions about how life was supposed to unfold (ok the vegetable one is maybe a bit silly).

Then one day, almost without warning, reality takes a different path.

The relationship ends.
The prayer remains unanswered.
The dream quietly slips away.
The person you thought you’d become feels strangely unfamiliar.
(Capsicum doesn’t actually taste that bad)

And suddenly you’re standing in the middle of a life you never expected to be living. Expectation leaves. Emptiness stays.

I don’t think we like emptiness very much – I certainly don’t! In fact some of my deepest fears stem from this.

So we rush to fill the emptiness.
We fill calendars.
We fill silence with noise.
We fill loneliness with distractions.
We fill grief with productivity.
We fill questions with quick answers.
We fill waiting with scrolling. So much scrolling.

Almost anything feels easier than simply sitting in the empty places. Perhaps that’s because emptiness feels frightening. It feels like absence. Like failure. Like something has gone terribly wrong.

But the more I read Scripture, the more I notice that God seems surprisingly comfortable with empty things.

An empty wilderness.
An empty fishing net.
Empty jars.
An empty table waiting for guests.
And, ultimately – an empty tomb.

It makes me wonder if emptiness isn’t always a problem to solve. Perhaps sometimes it’s an invitation.

I think about the miracle in 2 Kings, where a widow is told to gather empty jars. Not full ones. Empty ones. The miracle didn’t begin with abundance. It began with making room. Or the little boy who offered Jesus five loaves and two fish. It wasn’t enough. Not even close. But perhaps “enough” was never the point. The point was placing what little he had into the hands of Someone who was.

I’ve often prayed for God to remove the empty places in my life.

The places where people are missing.
The places where certainty is missing.
The places where confidence feels absent.
The places where my own strength has quietly run out.

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to change the shape of my prayers. Instead of asking:
“Lord, take this emptiness away,”

I’ve found myself trying to pray:
“Lord, meet me here.”

I don’t think God is waiting for us on the other side of our emptiness. He has been sitting beside us in it all along. Jesus understood emptiness. He knew what it was to be hungry. To be tired. To be abandoned. To weep. To cry out,

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The God who fills all things first entered the deepest emptiness the world has ever known. Which means there is no empty place in my life where He has not already been. That changes the way I think about my own emptiness. Emptiness isn’t evidence that God has left – it’s where I become most aware of how deeply I need Him.

I’ve also noticed that the people who have taught me the most about grace have rarely been the people who seemed to have everything together. They’ve usually been people who know what it is to come to God empty-handed.

People who have run out of answers.
Run out of strength.
Run out of certainty.
Run out of pretending.

There is something beautifully honest about empty hands.

They have nothing left to prove.

Jesus began one of His most famous sermons by saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

I’ve always found that a curious way to begin.
Blessed are those who know they are spiritually empty.
Blessed are those who know they cannot rescue themselves.
Blessed are those who have stopped pretending they are full.

Because empty hands are the only hands that can receive. Maybe that’s why grace has always felt so upside down. The world tells us to arrive with something to offer. God simply asks us to come.

I’d rather become someone who is honest about where I am empty because those are the places where I’ve most often discovered the surprising kindness of God. Not filling every gap immediately. Not answering every question. But quietly reminding me that His presence is not measured by how full my life feels.

Sometimes the holiest prayer we can pray is simply,
“Lord, my hands are empty.”

And perhaps the holiest reply is the one God has been giving all along. “Good. Now let Me fill them.”

I do not need to fear emptiness. God is always there.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 
Matthew 5:3