Driftwood and Living Water
A month ago, I went on a walk by the water. A long walk by the water.
As I walked, taking in the birds and the waves and the lakeside trees with their roots so deep, I quieted the noise within me.
As I walked, I became aware, again, of the One who is always walking beside me.
Not in the head, kind of way: because logically, I always know. I know till I know that I know. My head is inflated with knowledge.
I walked until I knew in my heart, I knew in my flesh… until knowledge seeped down into every crack and crevice of my body.
I walked until I knew, with all of me again: that the Holy Spirit lives in me.
I was so joy-filled, so marked by the moment, that I searched for a physical and tangible something to bring home to keep on reminding me of this revelation.
I, at first, picked up a piece of driftwood (soft, long, just the right size for the top of my bookshelf), I picked it up and turned it over. To my surprise, it looked like it had a snake fossil within (at least that’s what I’m calling it). I determined that a snake must have died upon and it and immediately threw it to the ground.
Rejected, I searched for another.
But every one I picked up for the next mile had the exact same markings.
I was almost humored: There couldn’t be that many snakes.
I returned to that very first one (the soft, long, just the right size for the top of my bookshelf one). I picked it back up.
What looked like the work of the Enemy (snakes, c’mon — follow the symbolism with me), was in a finger snap made clear:
Water had run here.
Living water had flowed through here.
Often and steady.
So persistent, that in all of the branch’s weathering, it had been transformed.
This was the branch I needed to see.
I instantly began to weep and pray,
“Let it be so with me, God.”
“When I am broken open, may the track marks of Living Water be found: abundant and transformative, having changed me.”
And then I started to hear (I know this all sounds mystical… I promise it was less than it seems…) a song I remember hearing when I was just 18 (a throwback linked here). I heard it at a revival. And I didn’t know then what I know now. I had the revelation of a child: a child who hadn’t yet lost her father, a child who hadn’t yet buried her own child, a child who hadn’t yet known poverty and illness, drugs and violence, a child who hadn’t yet weathered the storms of her neurodivergent child…
But, even then, before what has happened had happened, I had been captured by this tune, this hopeful melody:
“There is a river whose streams make glad the City of our God…
There is a river whose streams make glad the City of our God….
There is a river and it’s flowing here right now right here making glad the City of our God…
So, I will rejoice and be glad…”
The flow of the Holy Spirit within me,
It is my resilience.
The flow of the Holy Spirit within me,
Is my survival.
The flow of the Holy Spirit within me,
Gives me hope in what look like desperate situations,
The flow of the Holy Spirit within me,
Is what positions me to receive what is Yet-Coming.
Crack me open,
And what you’ll find is a flow of Living Water that has never run dry.
Crack me open,
And what you’ll find is a flow of Living Water that promises joy.
Crack me open,
And what you’ll see is that the Water keeps on flowing. It exits me: changing for the better the things around me (my people, my babies, my business, my church, my city), but it never empties me - for the Source is eternal and it never gives up on me.
A little piece of driftwood I took home,
With the markings of a snake,
That now I know to be the Presence of God.
Reminding me:
Mighty rivers run within me.
Out of me.
For me.
Neverending.
The flow of God for His people,
with the power to redeem all things, even our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.