Rivers in Low Places

Psalm 78:16
He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.

Like a lot of people in the south today, I woke up to the constant sounds of hammering. Apparently my neighbor saw the extended forecast last night and decided to build an ark. It’s probably a good call, since it’s been raining non-stop for a day with no signs of letting up until sometime this evening. It shouldn’t be long before I see the animals lining up in his yard, too.

I noticed something else, too, as I drove my car along the backroads of town this morning. The tremendous amount of rain overnight had caused all the gullies to fill with mini-streams which were pouring down along the sides of the roads. Now, I don’t want to live through a flood, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there is something about the power and movement of water that fascinates me. Waves at the beach, hurricanes in the deep ocean, flushing water in the toilet. Water just speaks to me, and this morning I was reminded of something that I think is so simple, we often miss it: water always flows down. It is always searching, running, and re-routing itself in an attempt to get to the lowest place possible. Usually, we see this in a bad way and try not to live in flood plains because we know that eventually, at the lowest elevations, the water in a flood will find us. Today, though, I thought of this verse in Psalm 78 and was so thankful that the life-giving river that comes from the very throne of God flows down.

We live in a broken world, surrounded by broken people who are beaten down by the storms of life. They are tired, hurting, and in need of wholeness. Everything God has, they need, but there is no way for them to get to that river mentioned in Revelation 22, unless – and here’s the deep truth about the simple fact I mentioned earlier – that river flows down to them, and our verse tells us that we serve a God Who does just that. He brings water out of rocks and makes it flow down to the low places – to the people who have lost hope, who have found themselves lower than they ever thought possible. God’s river flows down to them, because God is all about reaching down. He did it with His people in the desert, and He did it for us through His Son.

Now, he wants to do it for others through us. We are the carriers of this river, and everywhere we go, it flows from God through us to the people in the low places. What a ministry. What a privilege.

What a great God.

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