Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.
~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord,…. “What wrong did your fathers find in Me that they went far from Me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless? …. But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. … Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of Me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts. “For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds; but you said, ‘I will not serve.’
~ Some of the weeping of Jeremiah, in chapter 2 of his book.
Oh beloved, it is true. There is now within us rivers of Living Water. And no, this is not some single flow of goodness doled out to us by G_d to keep us nourished like some hydroponic plant or a person on a machine that is keeping them from dying.
No, rather He has poured out within us the entire ocean of His infinite Love. And there is no shore to a Body of Water such as this. It engorges the soul and spills forth on anything that comes near to us. People are often surprised at the Love and Joy which splashes onto them from believers living this kind of Life. But there is nothing to fear, one does not need to dry after this kind of bath – and it does not leave any stain.
And for a believer, there is this wonderful truth to the Life He gives to us. It is a life without concern for supply or want or wish or desire. For those things are simply irrelevant now that we know Him. All the things we thought before would provide this flow in the past, are now seen to be fleetingly gossamer facsimiles of the Real Thing.
And in yielding to His filling, we come to find out something we kind of knew all along, but could never figure out the solution. Apart from His infinite filling, we are really unable to love other people. The energy required to maintain anything like real concern for another is simply beyond the ability of any human being. And, in the past, any time we really tried to love anyone, we just ended up used up and hurt and dry.
And often, as we dried up, we panicked. And further, as we panicked, we tried to reach out and make the person we were trying to love, give us back the tiny little ration of water we handed them in the first place. And even further, this only made both of us drier than when we began.
Somehow though, in our old lives (and the temptation still exists, doesn’t it?) we try to figure out, and plan out ways to bring joy and rest and peace to our own lives. Yeah, we try to love others – but really we are just trying to survive.
This is the lament of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah. He can see it. Can we? Apart from Him, we can do nothing. And it is not a failure to realize that we are a failure. No, the great failure of a human being is to resist the Truth and to try and make other arrangements. While G_d, from His stunningly better vantage point and position of power, makes it abundantly clear that only His abundance can do the job of being truly real and alive. We are being utterly ridiculous, and He is desirous that we reduce our thinking to the simple math of understanding that finite cannot do a job requiring infinite strength and supply.
How about us? Right now. Tonight. Are we trying to do the ridiculous? What if we just stopped and let His Flow wash over us? What if we just held still for one minute and let Him begin to fill us?
Oh beloved. Let Him. He has more than you can ever hope or even imagine. There is no need to ever (really) look for water again. Look up, and let Him pour into you, that you can then pour out the Same onto others!
