How blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
In whose heart are the highways of Zion!
Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a spring.
– Psalm 84:5-6
The night eased toward early morning.
I tossed in my bed trying to shake off the day’s burdens so I could sleep. I knew sleep wouldn’t come, though.
It’s a rule. Moms can’t rest until their young are back home from wherever they’ve been in the night. I thrashed and prayed in the darkness until I heard the sound of tires crunching up the gravel driveway. With a sigh of relief, I whispered a prayer of thanks.
Shortly the back door burst open and they came spilling breathlessly into the kitchen, shattering the midnight pall that lay over the house. The Christian concert had done a good job of electrifying the group. They were filled up, spilling over. The wave upon which they rode crested and tumbled out ahead, crashing into my ears with the clean sound of pure joy.
In the darkness I soaked in the rush of God’s presence that washed through the house and ebbed into swirling little pools teeming with life. It made me long for more of God.
When did I get so dry?
At a community well over two thousand years ago, a thirsty woman met a man in Samaria who would change her life.
She didn’t know she was parched; it was the tired traveler asking for a drink of water. She was surprised a Jew would talk to a Samaritan. She didn’t dream she was talking to her Creator.
This man didn’t need her to give Him water. He called the first molecules into being by the power of His word alone. He could have commanded rivers to arise at His feet.
Instead, He sat at the well and stayed thirsty. He waited for her, for the moment she would meet her Maker and He would quench her thirst.
Water that is living is on the move. It doesn’t collect in stagnant pools. It erupts to the surface from the Rock beneath our feet, clean and pure and alive.
It’s impossible to be contained. The force of its power brings it upward, outward, flowing onward to renew all it touches.
Those who love the Master are His fountains, conduits from the source to the surface from which the Spirit reaches out to a dying world. It’s His desire that we allow this outflow to be unrestricted, unimpeded, and unashamed of the joy with which it flings itself toward the sky.
Life is our Baca, the valley of weeping. As we pass through the desert we call Life, we will encounter much sadness and shed many tears. But if God’s presence dwells in us, we will leave it a different place, a well-spring of life that will never run dry.
Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’
– John 7:38 (NLT)
