The Right Kind of Water

I lost a tree once. 

I mean, I didn't lose it, not in the sense that I once had a tree and then I couldn't find it. But I did lose it; it's no longer there. It was a majestic, overarching silver maple that grew at the peak of the hill behind our house. If I had to guess, I'd say it was at least 70 or 80 years gold.

I love thinking about the lifespan of trees. What must they have seen in their long, quiet reign as they grow and spread and shed their shade, and moss and grass crawls over their roots? We hung a tire swing from our tree, and for years, it was a place for my children to swing out over the hill or to wedge themselves into the black circle and think.

Anyway, one day, in the side of the hill just below the tree, a river suddenly gushed out from the ground. It was completely random; there had been no hint of a spring there before. And the water wouldn't stop. It flooded our backyard, seeping beneath our shed and forming a little lake and a sinkhole where the water poured out. 

My husband dug down to see where the water was coming from, but nothing showed up; just a random stream from deep beneath the ground. 

It smelled, just a little, like chlorine.

So we started speculating. It had to be from a pipe somewhere (given the chlorine smell); it couldn't be just a random spring from the ground. We thought it must be from the property not far behind ours where there is a pump house that feeds some of the neighboring houses. My husband walked up and talked to the owner of that property, who assured him that all valves were set in working order and nothing was out of place. 

Over the next couple of days, we started to make a little water way so that the water didn't continue to flood the ground beneath our shed, and could flow downhill past our house. We now had a deep hole in our back yard (hey, kids, want to play near the bottomless pit?), and we weren't sure what to do.

Then, abruptly, the water stopped. Again, my husband walked up to see the neighbor with the pump house and found that he had been right; there was a valve out of place, and the water had been gushing through.

And because all that chlorinated water had been flowing, unchecked, through the root system of our beautiful silver maple for days... the tree died.

I love water. Not particularly to drink (unless it's a hot day), but I love how it refreshes, how it cools, how it cleanses, how it washes. I'd lived in the desert of New Mexico for a while, and how well I remember the weekly car washes where, after seven days of simply existing in a desert, everything would be covered in a uniform shade of sandy gray-brown. I remember water in the desert, the return of the vehicle's brilliant color when the rag would swipe through the silt.

But if water is impure, it doesn't matter how clear it is, how much it sparkles in the sun. If water holds impurities, those impurities can damage or kill whatever drinks it up. Isaiah 14:23 calls this water swampland. "I will turn [Babylon] into a place for owls and into swampland; I will sweep her with the broom of destruction." Green, gross, still water that's not fit to drink. 

There's a stagnant cattle pond that I pass on my way into town; it's covered nearly all the time with green scum, and the cows like to wade into it on hot days. I see them stepping up the banks after their "bath," and they're covered in green muck clear up to their necks. The impurities cling to them.

In contrast, Isaiah 35:6-7 discusses life-giving water: "Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs."

And in Revelation 22:1-2, the best water flows. "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. One each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

I've tried to picture how it will look: a tree growing on two sides of a river. In my head, it's something like an enormous tree whose root system dips into the ground on both sides of the river with the water flowing directly beneath it as though through a tunnel. What a lifespan for the tree of life, right? A tree in existence since the beginning of Time itself! 

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations! The water of life brings healing! The tree of life grows leaves that bring healing to the nations.

I'm racking my brains for a way to apply this... oh, that's right! It does seem like I've heard of some nations in need of healing! Not just the land, the people in it. 

Oh Lord, send Your river to the nations that are dry and parched. Send us pure water that will feed us life. Send Your streams of refreshing, unclog the waterways, push back the sand and the silt that have been in the channels for far too long. Send the thirsty to drink deeply of your Holy Spirit. Gather Your people on the river banks. Revive us, Lord!