Peter Wallace: The Refreshing Waters of Eternity

Psalm 87:

1 On the holy mount stands the city he founded;

2 the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

3 Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. . . .

7 Singers and dancers alike say, "All my springs are in you."

You've experienced it, haven't you?

It can come when you look deeply into the eyes of someone you love and feel the connection that goes beyond mere physicality or emotion, but indeed is spiritual in every sense.

It can come when you stand at a magnificent waterfall, or on a peaceful beach pulsing with riotous waves.

It can come in the midst of a moving worship service, during a glorious anthem or perhaps in the Eucharist when the priest raises the bread and the wine given for all.

It can come when you feel the pleasure of God in your act of sacrificial service, or in your creative expression.

It can come in some totally unexpected time or place, but even so you know immediately what it is.

It's a fountain of refreshing clean water springing up in your innermost depths. It's the sense that something utterly genuine and real beyond reality is bubbling up within you, connecting you to the One who is all and in all. It's the effervescent certainty of God around and beyond you, the very presence of God within you.

The psalmist wrote of Jerusalem, calling it the city of God, in celebratory tones. But this city symbolizes the presence of God. As a believer, you live in the city of God wherever you are. Remember what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well--someone a good Jewish man would never speak to--after he asked her to give him a drink from the community water source in the heat of the day. Jesus said, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. . . . [T]hose who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" ( John 4:10, 14).

This is a brief psalm, so consider adding to it. How would you describe living in the city of God, in the very presence of the Almighty, wherever you are? What is it like to experience the springs within? Recall the many times you have experienced this sacred refreshment yourself. Even in the spiritually and emotionally thirsty times of life, there's a fountain of joy, hope, and life springing within you.

Perhaps right now you just don't feel it, but it's there. You know it's there. So join in the song, move with the dance, and praise God for filling you with the lively springs of eternity.

[Taken from Connected: You and God in the Psalms, Morehouse Publishing, 209, pp. 116-117]