A friend explained to me what happened when he recently pumped up his bicycle tire, or so he thought.   It didn’t  take him long to figure out that the pump was broken, and all he managed to do was let all of the remaining air out of the tire.   What he thought was filling up was flattening out.

That initiated a great discussion.    What are we pumping ourselves up with?   Caution is needed.    The world offers every faulty pump imaginable, and it doesn’t take long to discover that we are left empty rather than full.   We can easily be deflated rather than filled.  Dead rather than alive.  Flat rather than salty.   Immobilized rather than vibrant.  Parked and not running the race to win.

And yet God’s provision is for fullness.    Being full of HIM is the key to effective inflation, enabling us to journey down the road of life with balance and progress.   Nothing else can fill the emptiness and make us effective.  Not money, nor a friend or spouse, not intelligence.....anything other than God will never fully satisfy the longing to be pumped up.