The Source
A few years ago, we went hiking with our son to a “honey hole” (best fishing spot) between steep canyon walls on the Gallatin River in Montana. It is a wide, beautiful place, rushing, and wild in some places and deeply pooled with hungry trout in others. A red-headed duck family was paddling along among the rocks. Those big Montana rivers--the Madison, the Gallatin, the Big Hole—are teeming with life.
I am intrigued by the image of a river. At its source, it comes roaring up out of the ground somewhere. Oswald Chambers says that God is like the Source of a river.
As it flows, a huge boulder or rock formation is “a matter of indifference,” but the river just goes around it or dislodges it. In the same way, if I keep my eyes on God the Source, an obstacle in my life is not going to destroy me. The Spirit of God living in me just dislodges it and keeps on flowing around it, no matter how big it is.
This living water in the river of God gives rise to all kinds of living creatures—a stark contrast to the rising flood waters of New Orleans that brought death and destruction during Hurricane Katrina. Even if this year’s hurricanes prove to be just as terrible, the river of God will flow, rushing, life-giving, through us to others in “mighty torrents.” The river of his love will dislodge any difficulty in the life of a person who believes—and keep on flowing.
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1 comment:
There are many reasons why one might say the Holy Spirit is the river that flows from God's throne. I'm not saying all these interpretations are necessarily good Bible study, but they're interesting:
1) The Spirit hovered over the waters in the beginning
2) In the end, in the last chapters of Revelation, there is a river that flows from the throne of God
3) In Ezekiel or Daniel, I forgot, there is the image of an ever-deepening river that flows from the temple
4) Jesus says streams (literally, rivers) of living water will flow from within those who have the Holy Spirit
-ts
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