What to Do When Nothing Is Wrong but You Feel Empty

Anne Voskamp had the kind of life you'd probably sign

up for. She and her husband ran a family farm and were raising a

house full of kids. She loved God and took her faith seriously.

By every measure that shows up on the outside, she was fine.

The work got done, and the kids got fed. Sunday came, and she

was in her pew. And still, most mornings, Anne woke up with a

hollow feeling that she couldn't A kind of dryness, a sense that

she was moving through good days without feeling or tasting any

of them. She was thankful on paper, but still felt empty

inside, and she couldn't seem to fix it. Then, one morning, a

friend gave her a strange little dare. We'll come back to what

that dare did to her, but

first, welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm

Bart LeJay. There have been stretches in ministry where

everything looked right and felt dead. I was reading my Bible and

praying, doing all of it on autopilot. Nothing was wrong,

but I'd become a professional at going through the motions. And

somewhere in the routine, I'd quit meeting God in them. It

didn't turn around by doing more of the empty habits. It turned

around when I slowed down and gave him unhurried time again.

Something was fine, and the kind. With no agenda but him. Maybe

that's where you are. Nothing exactly is wrong. The bills are

paid. The family is functioning. You have got plenty to be

thankful and you are thankful. And yet, you still wake up with

a dryness that you can't explain. You're moving through good days

without really experiencing them. And the strange part is there's

no crisis to point to and no obvious hole to fill. That can

be more confusing than an outright problem, because you

can't say, what's the matter? God described this exact

condition through the prophet Jeremiah, and he used a picture

from everyday life in a dry land. Listen to Jeremiah 2.13. For my

people have done two evil things. They have abandoned me, the

fountain of living water, and they have dug for themselves

cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all. Two things went

wrong, and they go together. First, they walked away from the

fountain, the living, moving spring that never runs dry,

which is God himself. Second, they went and dug cisterns. A

cistern is a hole you carve out to store water you've hauled in

from somewhere else. At its best, it's a backup. But these

cisterns were cracked, so the water they collected leaked out

as fast as it went in. That's the picture. God's people traded

a spring that flows on its own for a leaky tank they had to

keep refilling. Here's how this shows up in a comfortable life.

You're still drinking, just not from the fountain. You're

pulling little sips of life from your work and your screens from

the next thing that needs you. None of these are evil,

necessarily. They just can't hold water. They give you a

swallow and leave you thirsty again by morning, and you end up

hollow in the middle of a life that looks full from the outside.

So the answer to the emptiness is to go back to the fountain.

Working your cisterns will only wear you because they were never

going to hold. There's no shortcut and no substitute for

the source. Ordinary time with God, unhurried, with your Bible

open and your phone away, is the thing that can refill a soul. It

sounds too simple to be the answer, but it's the answer

anyway. And that's what Anne discovered. past without even

seeing. Anne started writing them down. Warm water running

over her hands in the sink. The sound of one of her kids

laughing in the next room. Nothing about her life changed.

The farm was still the farm. But as she paid attention, gift by

gift, she began to notice God right in the middle of the

dishes and the noise. The dryness gave way. It turned out

the fountain had been within reach the whole time, and she

had stopped drinking from it. She wrote it all down in a book

called 1,000 Gifts. Nothing about her life changed. But the

dryness did. She didn't add anything or fix anything. She

just started paying attention. The attention out to be a way

back to the fountain. God had been right there in the warm

dishwater and the kids laughing in the next room the whole time.

She'd been so busy hauling water to her cisterns that she walked

past that spring every morning. Here's today's challenge. Ask

yourself one thing today where you've been trying to get filled

up Name the cistern, the thing that you keep going back to that

leaves you dry. Then give God 15 unhurried minutes with no phone,

no agenda, just you and him, with an open Bible and a prayer.

Don't rush it and don't measure it. Just go back to the fountain

and drink. Father, some of us are empty in the middle of a

life that looks full from the outside, and we can't even say

why we feel empty. Thank you for reminding us. We've been

drinking from cracked cisterns that never fill us, and we're

tired. Draw us back to you, the fountain of living water. Teach

us to slow down and meet you in the ordinary hours until our

souls are full again. You are the source, and there's no

substitute for you. In Jesus' name, amen. This podcast runs on

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Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me on Daily Devotions

for Busy Lives. Remember, when the soul runs dry in a life that

looks full, the answer is to go back to the fountain, ordinary

time with the God who never runs out. Come back next time for

more encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth.

Until then, God bless and have a great day.