When Ines is tyring to sort out her feelings for her former
companion, Pedro, who truly betrayed her, she prays a lot. She prays in an
attempt to find peace with her understandably angry feelings toward Pedro. And
the answer she receives is that she cannot love her new husband and his
daughter if her “heart was choked with bitterness.” If our lives are full of
all the unpleasantness we hold on to, there is no space for the wonderful
things that come our way.
This idea reminded me of a lesson I learned as a kid in
Sunday school. It is kind of a silly example, but it helped me visualize the
concept. You start with a jar. Next to the jar you have a large rocks, pebbles,
sand, and a cup of water (all enough to individually fill the jar). So first,
you fill up the jar with the big rocks until it’s full. Then add the pebbles,
and let them settle, and then add the sand, then the water, until literally every
bit of the jar that could be full, is.
The object lesson in that case was to fill your days with
meaningful things first, and you will then still have time to do the fun little
things. If you fill your whole jar with sand first, there will be no room for
the big rocks.
I think this can apply to how we spend our time, to how we
fill our minds, to the things we hold near and close to our hearts. If we dwell
on the bitterness and heartbreak of the past, those are the big rocks that can
occupy a lot of space, where we could let something else in. It was not easy of
Ines, but it was very wise of her to take out those big rocks of scars, anger,
and pain so quickly, and allow room for her love for her future family to take
up room in her heart. As it would be wise of us all to leave space for lovely
things to come.
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