Ezekiel 47:1-12

Two Old Testament Prophecies have been very much on my mind these last few weeks.  The first is Ezekiels vision of the river in Ezekiel 47:1-12.  The second is Joel’s promise of the Holy Spirit in Joel 2.  We’ll come back to the second some other time (it’s really significant and what Peter chooses to help people make sense of Pentecost).  

But the river – its fascinating!  Ezekiel sees a new temple, described in quite a lot of detail! From this flows a trickle of water, it comes from the altar.  As the water flows from the temple it gets wider and deeper until we’re told it becomes a river you can swim in and too deep to cross.  It keeps flowing and flowing until it crashes over a ledge into a place called the Arabah, where the salty Dead Sea is found.  This fresh water makes the salty water fresh and life starts to flourish.  

Its a beautiful picture, full of evocative imagery, and it reaches back into the ancient stories of God’s people.  When they wandered in the desert God stopped rivers for them, provided water from rocks and led them to fresh watering holes.  It resonates with some of the Psalms that picture a good life as one lived by streams and rivers, it reaches forward to Jesus.  Jesus who said a couple of times that belief in him would cause streams of living water – flowing inside God’s people, never stopping. 

Its an image that comes to John’s mind in Revelation as he pictures the final coming of God’s kingdom.  A city where people live with the King.  The city is green and vibrant, fed by the river of life.

I think its an image that pictures what God wants to do in his people at all times, and at this time.  Through the places of worship, prayer and encounter, Jesus opens up a spring of refreshing water.  So that we will never go thirsty, so that we know God’s refreshing and love.  This is what God offers us in the places of encounter in our lives: A spring of living water!  This is why we’re giving a bit more time over to waiting, ask God to speak and move, letting Holy Spirit work among us together.  We are making space for the spring of living water!  The water starts in the places where we meet Jesus, from their flows to the places of work and everyday life getting deeper as it goes.  

How might you make space to meet God in prayer and worship?
How might your household and your community see God’s springs welling up?

The water starts in the places of encounter (where we meet God) but it flows to the places of work and everyday life.  It moves from the temple into the Arabah, the dry place.  Its as the streams of God’s presence flow into our every day, our frontlines, that it starts to get deeper and stronger.  The waters not just in the supposedly-holy places, it flows with us into everywhere.  Making the places it goes healed and holy.  

Ultimately the water heads into the driest and hardest places – the Dead Sea. 
Even there its ability to bring life is irrepressible! 

I believe God wants to open up the springs in our lives.  To meet us as we worship, as we pray.  To encounter us in our Gatherings, in our Kairos Communities, in our homes, on our own.  I believe God wants to refresh us with a deeper sense of God’s love, God’s strength, God’s presence.  And I believe God wants to flow with us, carry us, into our everyday life.  Meeting us in those places too, binging greater amounts of his healing and presence:  for us, for others.  

Where does the river take you?
What do you see God doing in your everyday life?
What dry places are there around you where you sense the river wants to flow?