Clear running water

Few things in nature are as beautiful and refreshing as a clear, bubbling brook. The stones in the stream bed are smooth and clean, joyfully inviting you to dance in the numbingly cold water and gasp with delight; to follow it onward to the end of its journey! Vines trailing across branches, shy flowers peeping through the grass-- it paints a tantalizing picture, doesn't it?

Now imagine our stream, choked by dead branches and broken vines, with mucky leaves clouding the water. No longer is there the delightful smell of spring, but an evil stench emits from the sluggish mess. The water is stagnant.

The stream bed is a soul. God created it to be joyful, pure, lovely; but it became filled with sin and clogged up by desires of the flesh.

The water is the journey of the soul. If the walk is not being lived out, if the soul is not growing in Christ, it cannot remain pure. If a soul is not seeking God, it cannot be renewed and refreshed, and it grows cold. The Faith becomes stagnant.

No longer can the brook shout praises to God. It has no joy. It cannot invite others to join it, because there is no journey being taken. It has lost sight of the glorious end it was striving for.


Oh how I sigh for the renewing, Living water to purge away my filth and send me running onward, again skipping in His joy. How have I lost sight of His beautiful plan and let the cares and temptations of this world bog me down.

"But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." ~Psalm 130:4

"Faint was I, and fears possessed me, bruised I by many a fall;
Hope was gone, and shame distressed me: but His love has pardoned all.
Yes, I'll sing the wondrous story of the Christ who died for me,
Sing it with the saints in glory, gathered by the crystal sea." ~ Francis H Rowley