Living in Greece, I’ve become aware of my connection to
water. In Greece, you’re never very far from the sea, so I get to see it a lot.
Sitting and watching the sea, I feel the regular rhythm of the waves, echoing
the beating of my heart. The tides rise and fall just as my chest rises and
falls as I breathe. On my travels, I also encounter several significant rivers,
and I find that they affect my inner being as well – but in a different way.
Seas make me want to sit and listen. Rivers make me want to sing. I wonder why
the difference?
It occurred to me that in a way, a sea reflects a state of
being. A calm day with a calm sea creates a feeling of contentment. A stormy
sea creates an unsettled feeling, perhaps even a feeling of fear depending on
the intensity of the storm. Rivers, on the other hand, imply a direction and a
destination. It’s that sense of direction and destination that captures my
thoughts. It creates a “music” within me that I wish I could express in song.
Rivers are going somewhere. In the natural world, the
direction of a river’s flow is determined by gravity, with the water naturally
flowing to lower levels until it reaches the sea. But the movement within my
spirit travels a different way.
I think of the times Jesus spoke about living water. “Out of
his heart will flow rivers of living water” Jesus said in the gospel of John
(Jn 7:38, ESV), referring to the action of the Spirit within us. The Spirit
creates the movement of our inner beings as followers of Jesus. It gives us
direction and destination but, unlike the laws of gravity, we are not floating
downstream. The Spirit flows through us to create an energy, a power, that we
cannot create on our own. It’s not a very poetic analogy, but the best I’ve
come up with so far is that we are akin to turbines, which do not do anything
much on their own. But when water flows through it, a production of power
results.
And what is the destination that the Spirit’s flow is taking
us to? Revelation describes “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (Rev. 22:1, ESV). Later in the
chapter, Jesus invites us to come and “take the water of life without price”
(Rev 22:17, ESV). This is where the Spirit is taking us, our destination. We,
in essence, are traveling upstream. In the natural world, traveling upstream is
hard work, with the force of the current working against us. But with the
Spirit, that force is instead flowing through us – creating energy
instead of depleting it. Allowing the Spirit to work in us means we can jump
into the river and not drown; we are not swept away by the current. Instead,
the current draws us upward to the throne of God, from where the source waters,
the “spring of the water of life”, flows. That is a song worth singing.
