"Dehydration................."

”I thirst”….. spoken by Jesus, nailed to the Cross, that connection known with His Father from birth momentarily severed.

With our teacher, about half-way through his lesson last night, confessing to a headache that had been with him all that day, I can well understand how we managed to abandon the original subject along the way and chase something else down a “rabbit trail” instead. It happens. Having initially emphasized our need for “Spiritual” water, somehow he missed the turn; and, for almost an hour, our class pitched our tent in “the valleys that come unto us”, testifying to the truth of it being there, in the middle of adversities and trials, that we learn and grow. Trouble is, I’m don’t think we ever got to the even greater reality of it being important to remember: “While you are there, dig a well!” It’s not that the river has relocated, no longer where you found it in the beginning, “out of a man’s belly” fairly accurate in letting us know that the source of all that He is unto us isn’t external. The “hook-up” isn’t a matter of occupying the front pew in the sanctuary nor retreating into nature in an attempt to escape the world around you. Praise, peace, and psalms may well help the cause, but do not automatically open the floodgate. In fact, working yourself up in a sweat, trying to formulate the process out of your own strength, may get you nothing more than discouragement. In the Old Testament, about twenty years apart in the wilderness, God brings forth water from a rock. Moses, on the first occasion, is told to “smite” the stone, speaking to me of the scourging endured before Calvary; but two decades later such source appears to have ceased, the people once again in need of a miracle. This time, however, the prophet is commanded to “speak” to the rock; and when he, in anger, strikes it instead, entrance into the Promised Land is lost. The price has been paid. Christ suffered that we might know such fountain within us. Physical labor isn’t demanded. Surrender is. How well the Church has taught this down through the centuries, however, is, at the least, up for debate……..