Half Full or Half Empty?

August 5, 2014

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

I have a new answer to an age old question.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before:  “Is the glass half empty, or half full?”  Answer it as half full, and you are an optimist.  “It’s better, than nothing,” you tell yourself, as things could be a whole lot worse.  You choose to see your situation as better than it could be.

Answer it as half empty, and you are a pessimist.  You see the situation for what it could be, but isn’t.  You see unmet potential, disappointing results, or evidence of failure.  You dwell on the negative.

I think most of us tend to vacillate between the two options at various stages of our lives, depending on the situation.  I prefer to see myself as an optimist - - joyful and cheerful, hopeful about the future.  But I can still worry with the best of them, anxious about a future that has no guarantee of ever happening.  I can hope and I can worry, choosing not to fixate on one at the expense of the other.  Maybe most of the time we’d prefer a third option:  it’s both.  The glass is half full and half empty.  That answer would be true, albeit non-committal.

But I think I have an even better answer now:  The glass is neither half full nor half empty.

The glass is always full.

It doesn’t take a college degree in physics to understand this.  If you focus only on the glass and the water, then you are forced to choose between the two extremes.  But in reality, the other half of the glass – the half without the water – is not empty, or void, or meaningless.  It’s actually full of something invisible, but very real. 

It is the presence of air. 

It is air that fills the rest of the glass and interacts with the surface tension of the water.  It is air that gives the water its shape.  It is air that even maintains the water in its liquid state.  It’s true.  If you take a half-empty glass of water and vacuum out the air, the pressure in the top half of the glass drops dramatically and causes the water to bubble, and eventually boil.  It boils, not because heat is added to the water, but because the water turns to gas in order to equalize the lack of pressure in the top half of the glass.

But that’s not all.  Because it takes energy to move water from a liquid to a gaseous state, the remaining water – that which has not yet vaporized – has released so much energy that its temperature drops dramatically enough to freeze into ice.  [1] 

In other words, if you take a glass that is half filled with water and remove all the air, you wind up getting steam, then ice, then no liquid water at all.  That air may seem invisible, but it serves a vital purpose! 

So here’s the point:  If you are in a situation right now where you are tossing between optimism and pessimism, between what is and what can be, between hoping on the positive or dwelling on the negative, then maybe you should realize that your glass is neither half full or half empty.  There is something with you – right now – that is as invisible as air but is as active as energy.  And it ensures that your glass, in fact, is always full.

The Holy Spirit is with you. 

It’s no wonder that when the Bible describes the nature and work of the Holy Spirit, it often uses the image of air.  Ruah  (Hebrew) and pneuma (Greek) are two of the Bible’s favorite words for Spirit, and they both mean wind and breath.  It is an acknowledgement that the Spirit’s work is invisible yet indelible.  You may not always see the Spirit’s presence, but the Spirit is always at work. 

In those moments when you are caught in a seemingly hopeless situation, when the glass feels half empty, and you can’t help but focus on what is wrong, what has gone wrong, and what might go wrong, then the Spirit is there to fill your life to the brim with hope, courage, and a strength that you may only recognize in hindsight.  And without the Spirit’s presence, your situation would bubble, boil, and freeze into something even worse than it is.

Likewise, when you feel like things are going quite well, when your glass seems half full, and the trajectory of your life is on the upside, then the Spirit is there to open your blinders, caution you against temptation, and alert you to the sinful parts of your life that need more attention than you are willing to afford them.  And it is always, always, good to remember that even the good things in your life – your achievements, successes, recognitions, and rewards – have not solely come from your own merit or effort.  All good and perfect gifts come from God, whose Spirit is with you every step of the way.

So maybe learn to adopt this new guiding principle for your life.  Your glass is, in fact, never half full or half empty.  Your glass is always full.  Because regardless of what you are going through in your life, for whatever triumphs or tragedies happen to greet you each day, the Spirit of God is right there with you, to fill your life to the very brim with blessing, encouragement, guidance, and joy. 

Cheers!

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey R. deVega

St. Paul's United Methodist Church

531 W. Main St.

Cherokee, IA  51012

Ph:  712-225-3955

Email:  mdevega@sp-umc.org

[1]  John Hopkins University conducted an experiment that you can watch on YouTube that illustrates what happens when you vacuum out the air from a glass half-filled with water.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7nsZkVZc0