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Tag: water

Dried Up

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A poem by Ruth written after a paddle on Lake Albert

My creative juices are all dried up – dehydrated, desiccated

shrivelled and shrunken

Like my wizened features –

devoid of spare moisture.

A parched landscape. Cracked and furrowed 

Dry autumn leaves, ready to drop

Colourful maybe, but already half dead…

The lake nearly dried up one year – many years of drought took their toll.

The shoreline receded, retreated 

The waters shrank…and stank.

The shallows turned an unhealthy green.

The lake could no longer sustain the life within 

Death floated to the surface and lingered in the air.

People feared it would never return to its former glory 

What can be done? Is it too late?

But the first drenching rains refilled the lake, replenished our spirits, restored our hope.

Revive, O Lord, my vital flow.

I need your living water to renew my inner spring 

and the oil of gladness to soothe my parchment skin.

Monday: sanctuary

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There is a beautiful song that is usually offered on Easter Sunday evening – a song that is rarely heard after sunrise services and easter egg hunts and roasts with families have left our hearts full and our bodies ready for bed. 

It’s a song that acknowledges the painful history of the people of God – of immigrants, exiles, and slaves. 

It’s a song of the homeless. Of the wanderer. Of the displaced. Of the thirsty – for whom God turns the hard rock into springs of water. 

When Israel came out of Egypt,
Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
the mountains leaped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
Why was it, sea, that you fled?
Why, Jordan, did you turn back?
Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,
you hills, like lambs?
Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water.

Psalm 114, New International Version

This Easter Monday, we rejoice in the Good News that Christ is risen.

But, for those who still find themselves in the hard place, may you know in that still, small space where hope hesitantly holds on that you are the sanctuary of God. 

May God “split open boulders and bring up bubbling water” day by day as we seek to live as people of the resurrection.