email : Webview : Duane Brooks - Every Day with Jesus

September 13, 2019

John 7:37
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink."
New International Version (NIV)

   I jogged along the banks of the Brazos River this week. Probably going back to my earliest ancestors named the Brooks, I have always found myself drawn to rivers. I passed the place where I baptized a college student years ago. There is a park where Melanie and I used to sit and talk when we were falling in love. Then I came to the place where I nearly sank a sailboat in a storm. My rescuer fell into the Brazos that day. He probably did not know or care that Brazos, “arms,” is shorthand for the original name, “Brazos de Dios,” the arms of God.

                Rivers play a large part in the metanarrative of scripture, too. From the rivers of Genesis to the Nile in Exodus and the Jordan in Israel, crossing rivers was sometimes a dangerous enterprise. But Ezekiel anticipated Revelation when he envisioned a river that would bring life everywhere it went. On the last day of the feast of tabernacles, Jesus called in a loud voice to the thirsty to come to him and drink. His words inspire us. Jesus wanted people to believe not just so that they would get into a river and be baptized but so that a river might flow out of us. By river, John says, Jesus meant the Holy Spirit.

                Does that sound like our lives? Is there a river of spiritual life flowing out of us? Some years ago I took an old map in Virginia and lined it up with an i-pad to try to find the boundary marker on some land our family once owned. The map is from 1737. When I walked to the place where the river was supposed to be I found a tiny dry ditch. The river no longer ran. Rivers grow and shrink with time and the rainfall. This river was more like the bones of Ezekiel 37. It had been dry for a long time. How is the river of life flowing in our lives?   Do we believe he could increase it to flood-stage offering life to all we encounter? Do we believe? Do we?

Pray with me the words of singer Keith Green:

Father, our eyes are dry. Our faith is old. Our hearts are hard. Our prayers are cold. We know how we ought to be: alive to you, dead to me. Oh what can be done for an old heart like mine? Soften it up with oil and wine. The oil is you, your Spirit of love. Please wash us anew in the wine of your blood. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

This year our Every Day with Jesus readings will follow The Bible Project Read Scripture Plan. Copies of this reading plan are available at Tallowood Baptist Church, or download
the app at readscripture.org. Read through the Bible with us in 2019!
Joyfully,
Duane

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