Fresh Water to be Made Clean. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites and play-actors! You have become so pretentious in your hypocrisy. You are proving yourselves blind once again by being more concerned about ceremonial cleanliness than inner purity. It’s as if you think your job is done when you wash the outside of …
Fresh Water in Jeremiah: The Fountain of Life. “The Lord gave me this message: ‘I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.’ ‘O Sovereign Lord,’ I said, ‘I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!’ …
Fresh Water in the Vision of Ezekiel. “My heavenly guide brought me back to the entrance to the Temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the Temple. The water was coming out in a trickle. As the guide went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off …
The Fresh Waters of Christ. “On the last day, the great day of the Festival, Jesus stood and cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me! Let anyone who believes in me come and drink!’” (John 7:37-38, NJB) This is biblical theater at its best, so the scene deserves to be set. There are …
Fresh Water for the Woman at the Well. “… Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because His disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything …
The Fresh Waters of Creation. “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation; through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage to Egypt into the land of promise; in it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John …
Fresh Water: Streams of Scripture in Psalm 1. “Blessed is ‘the man’… He is like a tree planted by streams of water…” (Psalm 1:3). Psalm 1 is written in the wisdom tradition of Scripture, and is intended to introduce the Psalter by teaching us the difference between the wise and the foolish, the blessed and the …
Fresh Water: For Hagar and Ishmael. There were many times in the Hebrew Bible when God appeared in bodily form as a man. But can Yahweh be seen that way? Can one visibly witness a sighting of God face-to-face? There are a couple of reason why this contradicts Scripture: God is a Spirit (John 4:24). One …
Fresh Water: Moses and the Spiritual Rock. “… They all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:4). There is no doubt that Paul was talking about a divine rock that accompanied the Israelites on their wilderness journey, and it seems that …
Fresh Water: Job’s Tree with the Scent of Water. “For a tree, there is hope that if cut down, it will sprout again, that its shoots will continue to grow. Even if its roots grow old in the earth and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud …
Fresh Water: The Trinity Fountain. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (Psalm 42:1-2). God the Father. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh God declared Himself to be the fountain of living water. He stated in certain terms that He was …
The Thin Place at the County Jail. “ The thin place is where the veil between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way). This term from an ancient Celtic tradition has stood the test of time. The idea of a thin place …