The River Of Life

By Joel McKerrow

I feel the sand beneath my knees.

So dry.

So barren.

So dead.

Searing heat beats down relentlessly upon the frailness of this broken body. My brow, empty of sweat, it smoulders instead.  This lifeless place seeking to swallow me in its despair, it’s death, it’s stench. Desert in its most ferocious.

Death epitomised.

Yet, I know there is hope. Of that I will never give up. My breath shortens as I raise my hands upward, some sought of cry to the one I feel has forgotten. Forgotten me. Left me to die. First a cry of forsakenness, turning slowly into a cry of faithfulness. My life will worship even when I am swallowed up in this place. I kneel my heart, but my feet stand firm, anchored on rock that will never fade away.

Then it happens.

A breath of life. A glimpse of hope. My feet lie broken in the sand and yet a strange sense flows over them. I rationalise it is my mind playing tricks. Yet the sense grows, a reviving flow ever so slightly streaming into me.

My hands reach higher, my cry of desperation turns now to worship. My soul feels a trickle of life creep into the hopelessness that once was. It grows, it flows, deeper and deeper, seeking out the aridness of my heart and begins stirring something once so lost. Something forgotten, the hope of what could be, the faith of what should be, the dream of what may be.

But how? How in this place could there be anything that would whisper life, anything besides the scream of death- the cry of emptiness, hopelessness, isolation. Yet it is here… I… I feel it. Maybe it always was- maybe I just couldn’t see? Maybe this place blinded me to the presence of love that seeps into me now. The fog only lifting when my arms longingly raised in a desperate cry for help. The scales that clung to my eyes falling only when I finally acknowledged, only when I took my eyes off me.

It grows, it flows, deeper and deeper. So cold, so refreshing, life in all its fullness flowing gently, washing away the sand, the stench, the death from my very being. It rises now through all of my body until my mind begins to feel renewed. I can’t describe what this feels like, only that every sour, rotten, hurtful, rebellious, regretful, angry, depressed thought is swept away in the torrent and replaced with only that which was true, noble, pure, life-giving.
With the renewing of my mind and the blindness over my eyes lifting I begin to notice other people all around me. On the right and left people begin to arise like myself as the water flows into them. And yet, before me are bodies once as I was, on their knees curled up in despair. Hopelessness surrounds their broken bodies, as the appearance of death weighs them down…motionless.

My heart breaks for these fallen. It breaks and weeps. It breaks and weeps. I know the place they are in. I know they need the water to revive them. I know they only need to cry out to the one that seems so far away, for them to realise how close he actually is. The tears that I shed fall into the sand before me, softly at first and then uncontrollably. I cannot handle seeing this despair, I can’t sit and watch, I just can’t let this happen. Every part of me desiring for them to know the freedom that I feel, the joy, the breathtaking reality of life as it should be. From captivity to captivated. From death to life. From fallen to risen. From hopeless to hopeful.

The water now gushes into me, it floods my whole being. As my eyes weep for those who don’t know what they are missing, this water begins to flow out of me. It joins the stream of tears pooled in front of me and together they flow down through the emptiness of the desert. The water surges through me now. Hands still raised in worship, I know I have this connection with the source of the water. The one who gave me life in the first place. The one who has now set me free. I pour out love to him as he pours his life into me. This breath, this fire, this wine, this oil, this water that streams into me now I let freely wash over me and out, flowing down to my brothers and sisters before me.

As the water navigates its way through the crevices of sand, it trickles down into the broken bodies in front. These also begin to stir. Their arms reach out, their cry of desperation filled with the intensity of a scream that pierces silence. They begin to feel this life flowing into their barrenness. As the water flowing out from those to my side joins the stream from me, the water begins to rise through the bodies of these being birthed into true life itself.

It grows, it flows, deeper and deeper. Forming a river, a river of life that pours down through this desert. It pours out of those in front and continues down bringing life to more and more people as far as the eye can see.

As this happens I notice that at the side of the river there is the tiniest hint of green grass breaking through the sand. Each blade pushing through as it is filled with life from the water of the river. Straining at first to break through the constrictions of the sand, like fresh air through the lungs of an addict. Yet it breaks free and breathes in air for the first time. And with this hint of life, grass begins to form out of the sand like a carpet that forms its own persona as it spreads across the land carpeting the entire landscape. Small shrubs also poke their heads up, and start to form. Bushes grow and flourish into flowers. The land all around is changing. Vegetation is growing up all around the river. No longer does the place look like a desert, not longer is the stench of death around. Life has taken over. Life has poured forth to swallow up death. Death, thou shalt die. Death, thou shalt die.

The vegetation forms into the greenest forest I’ve laid my eyes upon. I hear the soft chirping of birds as animals start to appear within the forest. They gather at the waters edge and drink in the life. The life that flows through those of us still on our knees in the midst of this raging river. Clouds form overhead, just enough to block out the searing heat from the sun, but not enough for this place to lose the colour that seems brighter at every moment. Rain starts pouring down, refreshing all that it falls upon.

Life is all around.

New birth is all around.

Where there was once desert, where there was once no sign of life, there now is the most amazing rain forest imaginable, there is now a place brimming over with the abundance of life.

There is an image of the kingdom come.

There is a breath of heaven.

There is the incarnation of the love of Jesus through each of us on our knees in worship willing to let love flow from us.