Recharged, Reloaded

The following conversation took place at Starbucks on Saturday evening:
Joshua: Gosh, I need to re-charge my Starbucks card.
Robert: Don’t you have your iPod charger in the truck to charge it up?
Joshua: Haha! oh gosh, if I could re-charge my Starbucks card with my iPod charger, that would be the most amazing thing ever!
Robert: What? I thought you said your iPod needed to be charged!

Wouldn’t that be amazing? It’s completely silly and illogically impossible, but just imagine if you could re-charge a debit card or pay off a credit card simply by plugging in to a source of power – be it a usb port or a wall socket. I guess when I think about being re-charged, or, in the case of a Starbucks card, re-loaded [meaning I now have plenty of money in there to buy drinks] I think of being spiritually re-loaded. Whether it is the weekly Sunday meetings, the time spent in the House of Prayer in worship or prayer, meeting each morning for meditation and discussion on the Word, or simply hanging out in times of discussion with the young adult group or with friends, these are all times that I get re-loaded in the spirit. These are important times, critical times really, as they give me fuel and fire to continue on. Especially working in ministry, you can give so much of yourself out, and then feel as if you are spent … empty. The quiet times with God are amazing and oh so needed and desired, but so are those time of wrangling out the realities of living the Christian life. Those times charge me up too – they cause me to search and think and challenge me to go deeper. What I am saying is that I need to be re-loaded continually so that I can move forward and continue to walk in my calling.