The first winter we were in the Chicago suburbs, I decided to take the girls downtown to see Navy Pier. Why I did that in February, I will never know, as February can often be bitter cold (which I didn’t know at the time) – but it happened to be one of those rare not-below-zero-no-wind-days – so we lucked out. I’ll never forget the view from the ferris wheel overlooking Lake Michigan. It was stunning. Having never seen anything but lakes in Virginia until then, I expected it to be dark and muddy. What I found staring back at me instead was an aqua colored lake, frozen from the winter temps. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The ice near the shore had started to crack and split apart, and so you could see the water beneath. Gorgeous. Not quite the aqua of the ocean near Mexico, but it was pretty darn close.
I was reminded of this memory on a run around a lake near Boulder recently, probably because when I ran around it less than a month ago, it was completely frozen solid except for a small hole around which all the local ducks had gathered. This time, in the near 70- degree temps, you could tell the sun of Colorado had done it’s work: the ice was melted, the darker waters rippled, and the ducks squawked, as if they too were celebrating the start of spring.
It got me to thinking.
It’s easy to understand why a smaller lake (maybe one of 2 square miles at most) would freeze over. Yet even a lake as large as Lake Michigan (it has a surface area of over 22,000 square miles) freezes over due to the cold temperatures. The surface ice is thick. Once frozen, it takes some serious continued warming of the sun to create even small fissures that will break through and allow the water to peek out.
But that water was always flowing, even under the frozen surface of ice.
It reminded me of how sometimes, our hearts can get to be like Lake Michigan: beautiful but frozen, the living water that Jesus said would flow out of our hearts is still there, just …. covered. I’m sure its not something we know is happening, just like a lake that big can’t freeze overnight. It’s gradual.
It’s not the weeds that Jesus spoke of that make people walk away from faith because they are not grounded. It’s not a heart of stone that we might have had once in our lives. It’s just a place where that living water seems so hard to find, to feel flowing. It’s a place where we may continue to walk in faith, knowing God is real, but the deep stuff we once could drink from and hunger for seems unresponsive and hard to find.
My friends, if this is your spiritual walk right now, if this is where you are and you question if that living water matters any more, or maybe you are wondering if you can just skate on top of it for a while…
Hold on.
Ice forms little by little in the coldest weather. Isn’t that what life can do to us? Little by little. We may dance a bit, knowing we haven’t given up yet, and so the idea of living water still is something we resonate with. But just like the gray skies and freezing temperatures can cause a lake as large as Michigan to freeze over, who are we to think that we are any different?
We cannot create our own living water.
Yes, faith is the essence, the substance of things we cannot see. In my mind, this is a head thing. We can logically wrap our heads around this part. We can say we are not giving up on what we believe. But wouldn’t simply holding onto a belief and not fighting to know the living water that comes with that belief be a little like trying to skate on a frozen lake?
How can you let the light of God into your life right now and start to thaw places that have iced over, even if you never meant it to happen? I know we want things quick. Sometimes God does that. More often, it seems He doesn’t and it takes continued exposure, just like it takes days of sunlight and warmer weather to break through thick ice.
The living water is there, my friends, because the source hasn’t gone anywhere.
With the spring coming in our part of the world… why don’t you take time to join all of creation and let God thaw you out as well? 🙂
