Springs in the wilderness
My garden is green again! In August, I wondered if it could ever recover from the devastating combination of a puppy and drought. But a little digging, a scattering of grass seed and lashings of rain, and I had to mow it!
The beginning of the human story was a glorious garden but when humanity rejected God, we ended up in a desert. There are still fragmented glimpses of glory but our springs are poisoned.
Where are your desert places? For me at times, grief has been a wasteland. I guess a desert place could be any place which is barren, any place where hope is robbed.
So here is a precious promise –
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)
It is striking how many pivotal encounters with God in Scripture happen in desert places - Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus to name a few.
I love the story of Hagar who met God when she ran away in desperation to the desert. She ended up at a spring which she called “the well of the Living One who sees me”. God offers all of us this well - a deep well of God’s knowing us to our core, knowing our desolation and desperation, knowing our hopes and fears and yet meeting us there.
One of things I love most about ministering in different places is seeing God’s hope break into places of sadness and fear. The Lord is unfailingly kind.
There is no place too barren for God to bring hope. God brings water from the rock. God sent his Son to brings streams of living water to our wilderness world.
How can we trust that this promise is for us, who fail God so often? The Bible persistently shows us that God meets the undeserving. Consider the Samaritan woman who was offered living water by a well. She had a messed-up life but Jesus offered her living water as a gift - that comes by asking not by deserving.
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The gift of God truly is gift. Jesus offers us the transportable well of presence, streams of living water that will bubble up within us so that we can carry them through life.
Even a desert can become a garden – if there is water. The Great Gardener wants to give each of us streams of his presence so that our lives flourish with colour and fragrance, fruitful to bless others.
Our deserts can bloom.
Even in places where there is a drought of justice and honesty and kindness, when living water flows, the desert can bloom. In rocky places in our relationships, the desert can bloom. In places of stolen hope, the desert can bloom. In grief, the desert can bloom.
Since writing this, I have been praying for a well of comfort for the family of our dear friend Barry Kissell who died this week. He told me of his longing to be face to face with Jesus. His life was a wonderful demonstration of asking for the gift of God and seeing streams of his love and life. Years ago, Barry and his wife Mary adopted children who were left without parents due to a murder but they did it as if was the normal thing to do. Even in a wilderness world, you can have a fruitful garden if you live by a spring.
Jesus asks each of us, “Do you know the gift of God? If you do, you will ask me for springs of water."
Photo by Justin Wei on Unsplash. With thanks.
