What To Do If You Want Life in Your Life . . .

Mike Hosey, An Elder

Bodies of water feed a land. In fact, they do much more than that. They give a land life. Almost anywhere you find a lake, or a pond, you will find life both in it and all around it. But the most lush lands, those teeming with the most life, tend to be those that have rivers flowing through them.  This is because those rivers run long distances through large expanses of land, so that a greater surface area of territory is touched by water.  These rivers are almost always fed by runoff, or tributary rivers, and are often surrounded by many lakes.  When a land has rivers, it means that life-giving water falls on the land in abundance, either in the form of rain, or in the form of snow, or it bubbles up from subterranean springs. The life of the land exists in dependence on those rivers, lakes and springs. And those rivers, lakes, and springs exist in dependence on precipitation. But lands that are independent of rivers, meaning lands that exist without rivers, or bodies of unfrozen water, tend to be deserts.  Of course, deserts have life, but they are not teeming with it.  And the only life they do have is in a continual contest for whatever meager amount of water exists there. In places like the Sahara Desert, or the Gobi Desert, there are enormous stretches where there is no water at all, and no life at all.  They are about as lifeless as the moon.

But then there are deserts where there is water all around.  Antarctica is covered in water, but it is in the form of ice. It's frozen and immovable so that Antarctica, too, is about as lifeless as the moon.

When we have the spirit of Christ in us, we are like lands that are flowing with water (John 7:38).  We teem with life, and not only do we teem with life, life flows out of us so that others can have it as well.  And not only that, but the life is eternal! But if we try to be independent of that spirit, if we quench it (1 Thessalonians 5:19), if we are not dependent on it, or filled by it (Ephesians 5:18), then our river dries up, or becomes frozen, and the life in us competes for whatever meager water is left, and we become much like a desert -- perhaps beautiful, perhaps having some life, but hot, parched, and mostly dead.