“There’s no better place to find yourself than sitting by a waterfall and listening to its music.”
—Roland R. Kember
This morning we made the turn toward home and found ourselves at Snoqualmie Falls, just a few miles east of Seattle. And I spent quite a long time just watching the falls, listening to their music, asking the Lord what He wanted me to notice, what He wanted to teach me.
Later, as I was looking at postcards in the gift shop, I saw that the falls can look very different at different times. Sometimes, like today, the falls are a wide curtain, crashing 286 feet to the rocks below, throwing up enormous clouds of spray. When there is also sun, like today, a magnificent double rainbow appears.
But at other times, the falls become two long, thin streams of water, like those that would run from an enormous faucet. I read that this really doesn’t have as much to do with local rainfall as it does with snowpack in the higher elevations. It is the melting snow that feeds these falls. And that got me thinking…
What if we are like these magnificent falls? What if the cascade is like God’s power and glory and love flowing through us? What if the mist produced by the water hitting the rocks is the way we respond as we encounter the trials of life, with our response affecting everything it touches? The mist from the falls not only shows the glorious rainbow. It also enables delicate plants and mosses to grow in steep rocky places that are otherwise dark and harsh and inhospitable.
What if our lives could affect others in such wonderful ways, bathing them in the mists of the goodness of God?
In order for this to happen, we must be fed by the Source. There must be plenty of “water” flowing through us, cascading through and over the falls of our lives to splash onto others. And here is where the analogy breaks down a bit. A waterfall is not able to move itself around. But we can position ourselves so as to be fed as much as possible by the Living Water that Christ promises. Are we positioned where there is “heavy snowpack”? In other words, have we positioned ourselves so as to be in the path of as much as possible of God’s goodness, power, and transforming love?
What about the channels of our lives? Are they clean and open so as to receive as much of God’s “snowmelt” as possible? Or are they clogged with debris so that the flow of water is hindered?
And what happens to this Living Water as it flows through our lives? Are we in proximity to others upon whom this goodness can splash? Are our lives shaping and nourishing others? The answer is, of course, yes. Our lives will always touch others. But how?
As I’ve thought on this picture, it has occurred to me that the falls really don’t direct their own spray. This is only the goodness and power of God that have already flowed through the channel of our lives. God Himself directs where the spray goes and what it does.
I’m sure that many more aspects of this analogy could be explored, but I’ll just leave it here for now and encourage you to open the channels of your lives to receive the Living Water as it flows from the heights.
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
—Revelation 22:1
