Spring or Cistern?
We slept in a little today and went to the second Sunday morning service at Timberline Church. Once again Jeff Lucas did a great job communicating practical concepts of God’s Word in the current, “While You Were Sleeping” series, www.timberlinechurch.org For the first time I tried to stand for at least part of the closing chorus at the end of the service. That was a first and felt good even if it was for only 30 seconds or so.
The last two weekends have been the busiest the I have experienced since coming home from the hospital. They have involved travel, staying away from home, navigating crowds, helping perf0rm a wedding and the Colfax 5K. This past Thursday night was my first night to stay away from home by myself. I was really tired at the end of the day, so once Christian made sure I was in bed working on my blog, I wasn’t involved in too much activity and soon went right to sleep.
So, today has been a good “day of rest.” I will be ready to hit it once again tomorrow with some calls and contacts for the Rocky Mountain Energy Forum and my home exercise program and mowing the lawn.
BIBLE VERSE FOR TODAY… “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Jeremiah 2:13
God’s chosen people struggled with idolatry from the time they left Egypt. In the wilderness it was the golden calf. Then during the reign of King Solomon the intensity and temptations grew when Solomon married foreign wives and accommodated their pagan practices with altars to their gods.
Their idolatry was a shattering of the first commandment that was the basis of all the others. As God’s mouthpiece Jeremiah the prophet is speaking to God’s people as judgement from idolatrous Babylon is ready to come upon them.
In one verse, one statement, is the word picture that describes the actions of those who fail to follow wholeheartedly after the Lord. Two sins: (1) “forsaken me..spring of living water…” When we visited Israel two things caught my attention, the heat, that gave you an appreciation for water and the rocks which seemed to be a challenge in getting anything to grow or building anything.
So God’s people in turning to the idols of other nations forsook the spring of living water. God says He is an artesian spring. That is one that comes from the ground without effort and has an endless supply. This is the rock from which water came to satisfy the thirst of a nomadic nation in the wilderness.
(2) they dug cisterns that did not hold water. Digging their own cisterns is a vivid picture by itself. Because that would require much effort and hard work. Then the water supply was not from a well but water from another source. Perhaps it was rain or watered that had to be carried from a river or some place else. The water would not be fresh and it required constant effort to maintain the supply. But these cisterns were broken and didn’t hold water. What a disappointment when the effort to collect water was made and you returned only to find an empty c0ntainer in the ground.
Given those two choices, no one would select a futile effort to collect water on your own, for a spring that was fresh and constant and required no effort. But that is what God’s people did thousands of years ago and that is people continued to do today.
No wonder we read the words of Isaiah 55:1,2 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.
And we also read from Jesus lips the invitation “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. John 7:38,39
I am thankful the invitation still extends to us today; but a choice has to be made. Is that which you are counting on to sustain your life fresh and vibrant or stale and inadequate. Jesus words to the woman at the well in Samaria ring through time as an invitation today…“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.” John 4:10 Today choose to be refreshed by living water.