Living Water Sculpture by Jen Newman

LIVING WATER

I remember watching a ballet dancer at my college. She was very good, I guess. I guess because I know nothing about ballet. She did several choppy movements that looked awkward. Except for a few giggles behind me, the rest of the audience and I sat silent. It went right over our heads. We had witnessed humor thorough dance and we all missed it. If it hadn't been for the comments of the people behind me, I wouldn't have known that she was imitating an awkward, new dancer. She made those mistakes on purpose. It was to make us laugh. None of us but that couple got it.

That was how it was when God came into the world. Few "got it." Few caught on. Jesus played out God's will in his everyday living and few knew what he was up to.

That happens to us today. The scriptures pour out, heart and soul, the message of God's love. It is lost to us when we know nothing about scripture. That also happens when we haven't yet personally experienced the risen Christ, "received the Holy Spirit."

Had I known something about ballet, I might have known what that dancer was trying to express through the disciplined and graceful body movements across the stage. If not that much, I might at least have appreciated her talents. As it was I sat there blind – looking , but unable to see.

So it is with the Christian journey. Without study of the scriptures, we are deaf to the Word. Without a direct experience of the presence of God in our lives, we are we are church-goers but not yet Christians. The meaning of the scriptures is no more self-evident than the movements of the ballerina. The unschooled eye of faith is blind to the movement of God in our lives…the undisciplined ear is deaf to the whisper of God's guidance.

Frequently, Jesus would say, if you have ears, hear; if you have eyes, see. Eyes and ears must be trained to be useful in discerning the message of God. There are simple ways to experience God firsthand that can easily be learned. If practiced every day we soon develop the "eyes to see" and "ears to hear" Jesus told us we need to have.

So much has been given to us, shown to us through the cross and empty tomb. Will we "catch on" this year? The following illustration from Parables, Etc. says it well:

"The Amazon River is the largest river in the world. The mouth is 90 miles across. There is enough water to exceed the combined flow of the Yangtze, Mississippi and Nile Rivers. So much water comes from the Amazon that one can detect its currents 200 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean! One irony of ancient navigation is that sailors in ancient times died for lack of water…caught in windless waters of the South Atlantic. They were adrift, helpless, dying of thirst. Sometimes other ships from South America who knew the area would come alongside and call out, 'what is your problem?' And they would exclaim, 'Can you spare some water? Our sailors are dying of thirst!' And from the other ship would come the cry, 'Just lower your buckets. You are in the mouth of the Amazon.'"

The irony for ancient Israel and us today is that God, the source of "living water," is right here and we don't recognize and lower our buckets. "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation." Isaiah 12:3