Fountain Of Life

“For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light do we see light.” (Psalm 36:9 AMP)
 
I love water.  I always have.  If there was a stream, pond, river, or a puddle around when I was a kid, I was in it, and it's pretty much the same way now as an adult!  I adore the ocean; hearing it, seeing it, swimming in it, sitting on the shore watching it…it reminds me of the vastness of God, it reminds me of His power, it reminds me of His oceanic love for me.  That God depicts Himself through water touches the deepest part of my heart, ‘for with Him is the fountain of life.’ 

A fountain in Bible times was “a natural source of living water.  These fountains, bright sparkling ‘eyes’ of the desert, are remarkable for their abundance and their beauty, especially on the west of Jordan.  All of the perennial rivers and streams of the country are supplied from fountains and depend comparatively little on surface water.” (BibleStudyTools.com) Today when we think about a fountain, we think of a water fountain to get a drink on a hot day, or we think of a man-made fountain in a park or our back yard, but when David says, ‘with thee is the fountain of life,’ he means it in the context of what he was familiar with, and therefore was saying that God is the never ending, pure, inexhaustible, beautiful life-giving fountain.   

He is the fountain that will never run dry.  He is the fountain that washes away all the stain and residue that sin and brokenness cause.  He is the fountain that floods a dry, thirsty soul with the life-giving water of His grace and mercy.  He is the fountain.

And yet so often we find ourselves making our own structures to hold water in; water that has been borrowed and is not nearly so pure.  Listen to Jeremiah 2:13; “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and they have hewn for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns which cannot hold water.”  A cistern is a ‘tank,’ then made of stone, now made of concrete, that holds water for all of your household needs. We had a cistern when I was married and lived in Kentucky; it was a concrete ‘tank’ in the ground.  To fill it, my husband had a large plastic container that fit in the bed of his truck, and we would have to go to town, fill it up at the ‘filling station,’ then return home and empty the container into the cistern.  The water in that cistern supplied all of the water to the trailer we lived in then. (Oh my...a truck, and a trailer in Kentucky!)  If that cistern had gotten a crack in it, eventually we would not have any water, and no matter how much we filled the cistern up, it would keep running dry.  It was not an ideal way to get water.  Likewise, anything we try and fill our lives with that is not flowing from the life-giving fountain of God will eventually leave us dry, parched, thirsty beyond words.  In Psalm 63:1 we read, “O God, You are my God, earnestly will I seek You; my whole being longs for You, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” 

I know what it is to be without Him, to thirst and not be able to find any water, when all the while He is right there, the Fountain of Life, waiting for us to come take a drink, to get in the flow, to yield instead of yearn.  But in the midst of my desert when I couldn’t see the Fountain, when I kept trying to make other ways and things to hold water in, He just kept coming for me, He just kept loving me, He just kept cleaning me off no matter how dirty I became---that’s what grace is, that’s what mercy is, that’s what love is—it’s what grace does, it’s what mercy does, it’s what love does…it just keeps coming, just keeps pouring, just keeps loving until one day you finally get it: He knew me before I was born, He knew everything I would do, He knew every place I would hide, He knew every pain I would cause myself and others, and yet He still loved me, He pursued me into my darkness and He rescued me from myself, my sin, the enemy, from it all.  He destroyed my useless, broken cistern of a heart and gave me a brand new one.  He drenched me in the fountain of His love.  I didn’t deserve it, I don’t deserve it, but He loves me, He forgives me, He accepts me, and I finally got it.  I finally saw me, saw my sin, saw my shame, saw all I wasn’t, saw all I had done…and then I saw Him, saw His righteousness, saw all He is, saw His overwhelming love for me, and even as I write this I still can’t comprehend it fully; how He knew it all, how He knew me and the mess I would make, and yet He still came for me. 

Jesus speaking to the woman at the well, of Himself, in John 4:10 said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that said to you, ‘Give me to drink;’ you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water.”  In verse 13 He goes on to say, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again: but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” Jesus is the gift of God, and He is the fountain of life for all who receive Him.  God can be trusted to do what He does best—bring life out of death, fountains out of dry ground, light out of darkness, joy out of mourning, and hope out of despair…
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done—He still loves you, He is still pursuing you, He accepts you…don’t you think it’s time to take a life-giving drink from the Fountain that never runs dry?
 
                                                                            Thirst

It ​exists in every one of us
A deep unending burning need
To drink something that satisfies
To quench our thirst unseen
 
Maybe you’ve tried to drink love
Thinking it would stop your ache
Only to find there is no one
Who can your thirst ever slake
 
Maybe you’ve tried to drink wealth
Riches will surely be the cure
Once you’ve climbed the mountain
You find yourself deeply insecure
 
Maybe you’ve tried to drink pleasure
You’ve touched, tasted, and seen
You’ve had every high there is
Now more empty than you’ve ever been
 
There is a drink that satisfies
A fountain of life which never runs dry
There is a river of living water
Once you drink you will wonder why
 
Why did I reach for anything else?
Why did I drink of so much death?
Why did I hurt myself and others
By drinking poison disguised as breath?
 
Run to the eternal spring
Let Him flow over every part
Let Him fill you with His presence
Let Him restore your broken heart….





Written by Anne Marie Hawke
September 2020

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