(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Streams”, originally shared on April 19, 2021. It was the 108th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Has the pandemic brought you closer to God
or farther away? Are you looking for a way to hope again? To live a life that
truly is life? Oh and, where does God live?
When Sally and I thought about how to help people feel connected and
encouraged at the beginning of the pandemic, Facebook was our first medium. We
broadcast our videos “Live” on Facebook and called them Streams of Living Water
because, we were video streaming (get it? 😊) and
because Streams of Living Water is a term used in both the Old Testament and
the New Testament in the Bible for the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit does the work we wanted to
be a part of: “to bring a sense of connection and encouragement and an
opportunity to reflect about what it means to be a Christian during this global
pandemic”. It is the ongoing personal presence of God in the world to establish
the Church, to strengthen us and to give us the gifts to be the people of God.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is streams of living water.
Streaming video is one of the primary ways
that we all communicate and connect with the world now. It has become the New
Normal. “Hybrid” has become a buzzword. Cars that are electric and gasoline
powered have become so mainstream that charging stations are now considered basic
infrastructure. People got so used to worship on Zoom, and committee meetings
on Zoom, and family reunions on Zoom, work on Zoom, school on Zoom, that now
having a Zoom component in a hybrid meeting seems to be a necessary part of
every gathering. Health and distance are no longer a factor in who can
participate in community life.
Streams are also necessary for all material
life. Springs from the earth and rain from the sky become fresh-water trickles,
then rivulets, then creeks (or cricks where I’m from in Wisconsin), then
streams, then rivers, then lakes. All necessary for life to exist. As the water
moves along, it streams. The ancient Biblical world described rapidly moving
water as living water. Living water was longed-for in a place where, like
Southern California, water came seasonally, and sometimes was scarce. “Streams
of living water” is an abundance of something that is necessary for life.
The Bible uses this phenomenon as a way to
describe the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. One God in three
persons.
The Church, the Body of Christ, is the
people of God with Christ at its head. It needs the Holy Spirit for life and
that is all it needs. The Holy Spirit, “calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes
holy.” Sometimes it is a small trickle, and sometimes it is a mighty river, but
everything about the Church depends on the Holy Spirit for life.
Like a stream, the Holy Spirit moves us, it
pushes us and changes things. It makes us able to live in the Spirit, to wash
away everything in our lives that separates us from God, it is necessary for
life, for abundant life, and it gives all who receive it the vision to see God.
In Psalms 46, starting at the 4th
verse, the psalmist says,
*Psalms
46:4-7
“There is a river whose streams make glad
the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.” Have you ever noticed
that the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city? And in the middle, we get
this Psalm with a reference to the river in the city were God dwells. Where is
the perfect place? Where is a place that is fitting for the Most High?
I studied in Israel for a semester when I
was in college and, when I was there, I noticed that the Jewish and Muslim holy
places were in great shape, but that the places of significance to Christians
were often in disrepair. I asked one of our professors, a graduate student who
was a graduate of my college, why that was. He said that he had noticed the
same thing when he got there until he realized that Christians have no holy
places. The places that are holy are the places where God dwells, the hearts,
the true selves, of the faithful.
In John 14, starting with the 15th
verse, we read:
*John
14:15-17
In the already but also not yet Kingdom of
God, the place where God reigns, God lives beyond human comprehension and God
also lives within us. We are saints and also sinners, but God has made us holy
by God’s presence, and God calls us to live into the presence of God, by the
strength of God, by the grace of God, the source of life that truly is life.
The prophet Isaiah writes, in the 35th
chapter, starting at the 3rd verse:
As the pandemic seems to be giving way to
the New Normal, are you feeling dry spiritually, on the edge of a desert where sometimes
the desert seems to be winning? Are you wondering where the world is headed?
Are you looking for a way to hope again? To do what God is blessing?
Open your heart and talk to God today. Turn
away from the things that are spiritually drying you out and toward the living
relationship with the one true living God that God would give you if you open
your heart to Him and ask. Ask for forgiveness and receive it. Be made green
again and grow and be fruitful. Plant your life near where God is blessing and
seek justice and peace by doing God’s will. Allow God to transform the desert
within you into an oasis, a new creation, and be born again. Receive the Holy
Spirit, the streams of living water.
God loves you. God will never abandon you.
Turn to God and live.
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