The Abundance Of Milk
There was a saying years ago, “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” or some said, “There is no use in crying over spilt milk.” No matter how you say it, you have to ask
yourself why did they say it? Well, I think that milk is something that we feel we will never run out of because cows keep producing it. So if we have an abundance of milk, it isn’t worth crying over if we spill a little.
Let’s take a closer look at this saying because I think that we can learn a spiritual lesson from it.
When we think of milk we think of babies. All babies need to drink their milk.So in many ways we can associate milk with life. Paul addresses the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 like this, “So, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but instead as people of the flesh, as infants in Messiah. I fed you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready. In fact, you are still not ready, for you are still influenced by the flesh.For since there is still jealousy and dissension among you, are you not influenced by the flesh and behaving like unregenerate people?”
And again in Hebrews 5:13-14, “Anyone who has to drink milk is still a baby, without experience in applying the Word about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by continuous exercise to distinguish good from evil.”
We all start as babies in Messiah, but just like in real life, we have to grow up and mature. When I look at this saying about spilt milk, I think this is how we feel about life, especially when we are young. When we are young, if we have a few setbacks, well, it is not worth crying over because there is always tomorrow. But is there any wisdom in that thinking? To the young they will say “Yes” Solomon said this in Ecclesiastes 5:19, “For they will hardly dwell on the shortness of life, because God lets them busy themselves with the joy of their heart.”
But what does God have to say about that thinking?
Psalm 90:10-12 says, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is only trouble and tragedy; for it quickly passes, and we disappear. Who understands the power of Your anger
and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”
Well I see their point, seventy or eighty seems a long way away if you’re in your twenties or thirties and maybe even fifty.
But what about Psalm 103:15-16,
“The days of man are like grass. He grows like a flower of the field. When the wind blows over it, it is gone. Its place will remember it no more.”
Or James 4:13-14
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
Psalm 25:7 says, “Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD!”
Young we may be, but young we will not stay, for we will all grow old, if it is the will of God and one day we will meet our Maker. If we never repented of our sins, we will be crying over spilt milk, because the abundance of life will run out. But God has His ways to bring us to repentance and that way is by spilling the milk.
When God spills the milk in our lives that causes us to cry. Crying brings about sorrow and sorrow brings about repentance. Paul tells the Corinthians in
2 Corinthians 7:9-10, “I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death”.
Through our trials and tribulations God causes godly sorrow to bring us to repentance and to produce in us a maturity. As James 1:2-4 tells us, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
Again in Romans 5:3-5, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Hebrews 12:7, “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
If the milk spills in your life, no matter if you are young or old, cry over it because the abundance of life is short. God wants us to have a humble and contrite heart, and for this, He will never turn away.
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