Floating in the ocean of youth, I recall the glassy surface of a summer’s early morning. Out in the lineup of friends, we used to sway with the ocean’s subtle movement until the crisis of an impending set of waves. Then joy. Sweet surfer joy!
After hours of delight in God’s greatest water park, we would notice the strangest of things. Our bare shoulders would accumulate salt. In the sun and in between the sets of waves our bodies would begin to absorb and retain on our skin the very nature of the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the greatest desert on earth for us human beings. Desiccated! That is what we would find ourselves becoming. Dried out, salted, in need of refreshment and, ironically, water.
The Christian life is like that. We often find ourselves alone in desert places surrounded by the irony of a multitude of people. Carrying our burdens, worries, hopes, dreams, perhaps shame, we long for refreshment in the consequence of our daily life. Dried out, dried up, salted beyond belief, we long for the living water about which we have been told. But we feel…Desiccated!
The Bible (and I would suggest that this is a good place to start) has numerous citations of desert places with God’s people populating them. They wandered in the desert for forty years, those chosen ones of Israel. They felt like “a lonely bird on a housetop” (Psalm 102:7), the many faithful of God. “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:37-38). They were people “of whom the world was not worthy.” Desiccated!
I don’t like those stories. I want victorious and overpowering stories that are flooded with conquest and might. I want the goodness of God “in the land of the living.” I want to see health, wealth, fortune, success, satisfaction, consistency, opulence, good looks (mine of course) and arrival! I want faithfulness, because there is no other choice. And choice, what about choice…my “reformed” brothers and sisters can’t handle that, but neither can I. Desiccated!
John 7 tells us that this “living water” will flow out of those who have trusted God, like a river. He put it there. He keeps it flowing. It is not outside of us, as if we had to seek it out. As His children, He floods our souls, from the inside out. He is the king over the mighty flood of His love, His hope and His faith. We are not alone, separated, castoff nor disowned. He is our refreshment. He commands the waters of His river to gush forth. He is the answer to our desiccation. If only we would let Him work!
Ironically, joy in the desert.
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