Tag Archive | Living Water

The Life Giving Lake

Oct11

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for 5 minutes on a one-word prompt, without heavy editing, and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “deep.”

I walked to the edge of the lake and stuck my toes in the water. It was surprisingly warm. I figured it must be shallow because everyone knows that deep waters are cold. And mysterious. And dark.

So I began to walk further in, exploring, a little hesitant, not knowing exactly what I’d encountered, but figuring I had heard enough about this particular lake to have some idea of what I was getting myself into.

Boy was I wrong.

I knew nothing about this vast, unsearchable body of water. I didn’t know that it would beckon me to go deeper.

I didn’t know that it would encompass me, overwhelm me, yet buoy me and keep me safe.

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I didn’t know that I would never, ever be able to fathom its depths. That I would never know everything there was to know about it.

But I could see myself reflected in its depths.

And I would be drawn back to it time and time again. In fact, I would never want to leave. And I never had to. I could live there, in fact, I had to live there.

What I didn’t know is that life was in its depths. And after all, it wasn’t dark beneath the surface. It was surprisingly, amazingly, overwhelmingly, bright.

 

Drink Like A Deer

Feb20

img_1701-1In my front yard I have a grapevine doe. She used to be a Christmas decoration, but eventually the light bulbs burned out. So I moved her over to my koi pond, which sits right in front of my dining-room window. And now I can watch her all year long.

Every once in awhile I see a lizard skittering inside her belly.

What struck me today, though, was that she’s ever so close to drinking that water, but never quite getting there. If she could just stretch a little further; if the water would just come a little closer, she could be fulfilled.

It reminded me of the verse, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1b).

Do I long for God? Do I literally feel as if I will die if I’m not with Him?

This winter has been rough—I know, I know, how can a Version 2Florida winter be rough?—but though the sun has been shining and the weather has been warm, the storms of life have almost undone me.

From emotional crises to a nagging health issue to an accident that’s causing me to take on a role that doesn’t come naturally to me, the blizzards hit one after another, just as if I’m New England in this winter of ’17.

Oh, how I long for the flowing streams of God’s grace. I don’t want to sip, I want to plunge in, head over heels, and feel Him surround me and take me under so that I’m no longer breathing air, I’m breathing Jesus. Every breath I take.

Sometimes the life-giving water seems far away. I just can’t reach that far. There is too
much fear, like lizards crawling around in my belly. Do I trust Him, even though He’s choosing to keep me in this season?
img_9130Do I believe He’s a good Father who is doing the best for me? Working all things together for good. Because I do love Him. I am called according to His purpose.

As the hymn writer Horatio Spafford said, “When peace like a river attendeth my way . . .”

So many water images in the Bible, Jesus Himself being the epitome of that. Living Water.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” Ps. 34:8.

The water is fine, I tell that doe. And myself. Dive right in.

A Sponge Out Of Place

Jun17

sponge on the roadSometimes when I ride my bike in the mornings before it gets too hot, I happen upon some strange things. The other day, it was a dried out kitchen sponge just lying in the middle of the bike lane in a quiet neighborhood. Trash isn’t necessarily hard to find, but I found this little yellow sponge to be uniquely out of place, and a poignant reminder of a spiritual truth: Unless we are soaking in the presence of the Living Water, we will be like that sponge in the middle of the road.

What do I mean by that exactly? Well, what was that sponge doing? Was it fulfilling its purpose? No. It was dried up. It had been cast aside, or lost. It was insignificant.

Take that sponge back to a body of clean water, and it could once again do what it was meant to do. It might need a run through the washing machine first, but what once was a dried up piece of trash that nobody wanted would become a useful household item again, doing what it was created to do.

I’m not suggesting we have to be doing something to be acceptable to our Heavenly Father. He loves us whether we’re doing what we were created to do or not. But how much better is it when we are walking with Him, doing what He wants us to do, and fulfilling our God-given purpose.

I didn’t pick up that old sponge that day and take it home and rehabilitate it. But that’s what God has done for each one of us. He has poured His Spirit into us and given us purpose. I know I’m happiest when I’m doing what God wants me to do. How about you?

In Need of Water

Jun8

I have a plant in my house commonly known as a peace lily. It’s real name is spathiphyllum. When it gets thirsty, it really lets you know: the leaves wilt and hang down like it’s bearing the weight of the world on it’s slender stalks. When I see it like that, I grab the nearest unemptied glass of water I can find (they’re usually plentiful around my house) and give it a nice drink. Within an hour or so, it’s perked back up again. It’s a thriving plant, really. To look at it, you wouldn’t guess that it often has to tell me in no uncertain terms that it wants water. I don’t water it on any regular schedule. In fact, when it was getting watered daily, it didn’t bloom. I’m no horticulturist, but I wonder if there are plants that need just a little bit of drought to cause them to bloom.

I think our spiritual lives are like that. We always have a source of Living Water to which we can go on a daily basis. But it’s when we’re in a desert that we bloom. The lessons learned in the hard times are what cause us to grow. We don’t want to live in the desert, where the view of plush plants and grass is missing, but neither should we look at the desert as a place of death. Sometimes our thirst is the only thing that reminds us that we need the Living Water.

“For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17).

*disclaimer: the pictured peace lily is not mine 🙂

Thankful today for:

351. a job well done

352. help

353. a slower schedule

354. a spontaneous play date

355. clean clothes

356. the color green, except when it’s at the bottom of my fish tank