My Soul Is a Stream

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

(Jer. 2:13)

I think the place where I was most influenced by this verse was in Larry Crabb's Connecting, when he wrote about the different strategies we have in trying to relate with people other than really connecting with them in Christ. I don't remember everything he said, but likely I will echo much of what is there.

I think of my soul. It is a living, moving thing, but I tempted to treat it like a bowl. I want my life to be a pool. I can dip in and draw from it when I want to. The problem is that, like a cistern, such a pool depends on rain and reuses the water. Also the water has to be cleaned somehow to remain drinkable.

The metaphor will break down, of course. But what I sense is that I long for my soul to find a stasis that I can control and hold. Unfortunately, like any stagnant pool, the water in my soul cannot remain fresh or even drinkable. Also, my soul leaks.

The fact that my soul "leaks" gives a clue to its true function. It is not meant to hold water, but to guide a stream. It is a stream-bed more than a cistern. It is meant to hold "living," flowing water. Too much pooling or damming does violence to its function: bringing life to and through all the aspects of my being, my heart, mind, and body.

The trouble with streams is that they flow where they will and not where I would have them go. So my soul acts almost independently of my desires. "Why so downcast, O my soul?" is the pained question of how I cannot hold and control the life that comes and goes through my soul. I cannot control my soul, but I can seek to restore it.

Jeremiah says in the same chapter: "Now why go to Egypt to drink from the Shihor? And why go to Assyria to drink water from the River?" Innately, I know my soul needs restoration, but I have a part of me that does not want to go to God. I want restoration to be quick and easy, not slow and difficult. This is one way of sin, forsaking the way of God and seeking something else that seems easier or better. As Dallas Willard says, "Temptation is the thought that you're missing out on something." The irony is that Jesus' way may seem more difficult, but really it is easier than than what I often try to do: grab and hold water.

But the fact remains that God is the only spring and everything else leaks out and provides not living water, but sitting water that seems fresh, but quickly becomes stagnant and leaks out. I find that the most disturbing part of God's restoration of my soul is that it flows. I cannot keep it or control it, I must receive it from moment to moment. It involves continual interaction, that is, real relationship with him. Only then is my soul restored.

One picture of such a restoration and its cost as well as joy is the picture in the Two Towers of the Ents restoring the flow if the river (Entwash?) through Saruman's domain, washing away the dams and the war machines and the orcs and bringing life back to that whole region, through the defeat of evil and the return of the river to its God-given purpose, watering and bringing life, rather than powering machines for war and domination.

God bringing living water through my soul is hard in how it washes away my dams that seek to contain and hold it for my own purposes. I must also allow it to flow through me. Love is not merely something I receive, it is (more importantly) something that I give. It is not so important because my love accomplishes so much, but because it is what I am made to do and, really, what I long to do. The soul is made to facilitate such giving, so that it springs from God and returns to him, in worship, wonder, awe, service to others, and welcoming them. I cannot truly receive love from the Lord without returning it to him. That is the nature of Trinity, a community I am called to be a part of. As Trinity, love flows in, through, and out of God.

Lord, let me live in the flow of your love. Let me clear the path for this stream of living water rather than try to dam and keep it. Bathe and wash my whole life with your beauty, goodness, and love flowing through my soul. Amen.