headwaters (river, part three)

Have you visited the headwaters of your defining dream? Have you made an inner pilgrimage to the birthplace of the vision that shapes your intentions?

It’s not an easy hike. Sometimes you come across dams you’ve built to block to flow of your own calling. Sometimes you encounter a culvert of pollutants you’ve allowed to empty into your passion.

But eventually you make it back to the simple source. A wellspring of clear water bubbling up from your soul-dirt... The Spirit flowing from your deep places...

Your family, your friends, your community need the living water that is meant to flow from you. You’re an integral part of a relational ecosystem.

river (part two)

Riverbanks make a river possible. Limitations facilitate flow.

Riverbanks aren’t absolutely rigid; they aren’t permanently fixed. Flow affects limitations.

The reciprocity of a river and its banks teaches me things about the paradoxes of faith-life: focused and flowing -- settled and questing...

The current is power, direction, intention, movement... submitting to boundaries.

The banks are shape, form, structure, support... organic and malleable, responding to the stream of change.

river (part one)

Has a more inspiring description of worship ever been conceived than Ezekiel 47:1-12?

Water flows from under the altar, out of the temple, increasing exponentially until it is a great river. It flows eastward into the Dead Sea, transforming the brine into freshwater. (Interestingly, the marshes are left salty; presumably as a source of preservative and seasoning.)

The formerly “dead” sea becomes as full of fish as the Mediterranean. The riverbanks are lined with trees bearing nutritional and medicinal fruit. The picture is of lavish abundance – of fullness and healing.

This transformative power floods from the temple - the iconic center of worship in Ezekiel’s culture. He’s portraying a world profoundly changed by, and a way of life instigated and sustained by worship.

Speak to that rock

When the water dried up in Kadesh, and the people brought their pointed complaint to Moses, God told him to “speak to that rock… and it will pour out its water.” Moses chose to strike the rock twice with his staff instead. Water still gushed from the rock, but Moses lost something by not honoring God.

At times, people in authority over me have seemed like that rock: set in their ways, hardened, difficult to relate to… What if God’s word to me is the same as his word to Moses? Speak to that rock.

There are blessings that can only come through the people God has placed in authority over me – blessings like the water the Israelite community so desperately needed in Kadesh. In order to continue my journey, I need the water that flows from them: wisdom, protection, guidance, compassion, assistance...

When an authority figure has what I need, and I know I can’t go on without it, I'm faced with an age-old impasse: Will I speak to that rock or strike it? Often the temptation to strike the rock is strong. Dishonor takes many forms – some are harsh, some are cold, some are glossed with politeness. All of them make the person in authority over me a little less human.

I'm only just beginning to understand what my dishonoring actions have cost me over the years. Moses lost the dream of taking his people all the way into their promised homeland. He got what he wanted in the moment, but he fell short of his ultimate goal.