Still Waters

The mind is something quite extraordinary: although able of formulating a single perfect thought it can simultaneously create a whole other thought process for a different idea. I struggle with the mind working on too much at the same time. It is chaotic at times, helpful in other situations but mostly just tiring, mostly just exhausting, for the mind is powerful it affects your whole system: a single thought can be felt throughout your entire body. However, confusing this may be, however chaotic life feels, today the Lord invites me to just sit. He calls me to him, knowing that I am tired and asks me to just sit with me. Not to give me a solution, for I know he has it figured out but to just simply sit. Wouldn’t we, multifunction minded people call that a waste of time? Wouldn’t we simple beings, who think ourselves bigger creatures, because our little brains work at fast pace think of that as being lazy? And if yes, isn’t being lazy a sin? Well in this situation I would disagree. It is not that type of “sit and wait”, it’s not a “sit and do nothing”, it’s a sit and rest in me – sit and reflect: why do you worry? Why do you let your worries bring you to the edge of exhaustion? Why do you allow human problems, things of which you have 0 control over and 0 solutions for to keep you unbalanced and on your edge? Have I not taught you that I’m taking care of all in your life? Have I ever let you down? Have you ever been left alone by me? When people leave you, I have never turned my back on you so why don’t you feel at ease?

Today I ask you to just sit. Sit and rest in me. Sit and reflect on all I have put you through and all you have survived. Think of how that as changed you and made you who you are today. Are you not kinder from it? Stronger? Thinking more clearly? You still think you overreact? Well, I would disagree because the old you would have probably given up already in your situation right now – that is why you went through all that, so you wouldn’t give up right now. But I know you are tired but rest in me. I put something in you that not even you can see yet but in time you will.

John 4:28

“Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

Think of this situation, a woman who had been suffering for many years, had been with multiple husbands to find support yet never supported, tired both physically and mentally goes to a well and meets Jesus where He tells her that the water He offers will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life and when told to go get her husband, she goes and “leaves her water jar”. Most might think “is just a water jar” but was Jesus not talking about water? The water you drink. And was that jar not heavy? Imagine walking such a distance carrying that jar with you everyday just to have something that one thinks essential for our existence? But God tells you – you do not need it, let it be. She left the jar, she left the pain, she left the worry, she left what she thought was necessary for her existence next to Him and went – so why do you hold on to it? Why are we holding on to what we think we need in life to exist when we know we don’t. Let go of the jar of water, for that water will only leave you thirsty again and take what He gives you. Settle your hearts, put them at ease, you won’t ever need to go to the well again.

John 4:35

“Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest”

I do believe that speaking to the apostles Jesus was referring to the Samaritans who were ready to live in Christ and didn’t know it. However, there is more to these words than meets the eyes. We like to sit in seasons of waiting and blaming life for it because “it’s not the right time just yet” but what if it is, we are just focusing on the wrong thing. What if what we are waiting for is simply not for now just yet and the way to get it is not the one, we thought it was – “look at the fields!” Look around you? Have you looked around you? Have you allowed God to work His way instead of building your own road? Have you sat down with Him and let Him show you the path? Him tell you what is next? Have you tried just living? Instead of wrestling the worries and fights that have not even happened yet, have you tried just looking around and letting Him show you the way for the right now? You don’t need to wait four months to harvest, His word is already within your very soul, you just haven’t been listening.

John 4:36,38

“Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. “, “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. “

As I read this, on my way back home to visit my parents, a feeling on gratitude and curiosity settles in me. Could the “hard work of others” be the hard work of what our parents have done so we can become better? I know my parents’ story, one that was by no means easy, and I am grateful to not have lived that life, to not need to live that life but that means that they did. They went through that struggle so I wouldn’t need to, so I can be put on this earth to learn what I needed to learn and not worry about those issues that they have so graciously solved before I arrived. Is that not wonderful? A gift of the Lord? It doesn’t mean He thinks we are incapable of solving such issues, maybe we would be even stronger than our parents were, but it just wasn’t the issue we needed to focus on because that would distract us from what it is we need to do – our purpose. Be reminded that Jesus was sitting by a well on Jacob’s land, land he then gifted to his son Joseph. Jacob who had his own wrestles got this Land from the Lord and then passed it on to his son Joseph. Joseph never needed to wrestle to get the well, but he wasn’t supposed to, because that wasn’t his purpose, that wasn’t his fight – and the fights on Joseph were not the fights of Jacob. See, He will put you exactly where you need to be at the time you are needed. I was born to a woman who needed healing, a woman who has said in the past that “she healed me when I needed healing” and I was given a name that means “God heals”. This name was not thought of by anyone and chosen but passed down from my brother not knowing what it meant – or so we think, for maybe it was His plan all along because at some point He knew it would be relevant for me to know its meaning. He knew that His biggest blessing set upon me, would at times feel like it was my biggest curse because I would be blinded by my own issues and try to understand life through my own understanding. He knew who I was before I was even born.