In many ways I have found myself to be ‘all over the place’ in recent weeks: sometimes grateful and rejoicing, sometimes deeply saddened and lamenting, sometimes questioning, sometimes enjoying the slower pace and sometimes angry or fed up with the whole affair and so on….
As a flawed human being I am not capable of always thinking right, good, holy, true and noble thoughts. I need help.
Our Helper Jesus has shone for me through out these surging tides of emotions and thoughts.
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever…. Hebrews 13:8
WATER FROM THE ROCK
When Moses at the command of God took his Rod, (his staff or stick) to stand upon the rock in Horeb and seek water he did so in faith. Faith based upon what he had seen of God already at work in and through him – the burning bush, the plagues, release of the Israelites from Egypt through the parting waters of the Red Sea. Faith to stand upon the dry, stone rock, and in hearing God to strike the rock so that water for their thirst came…. nothing else would tell you normally to strike a rock if searching for water. Exodus 17:1-7
When a similar situation arrives in the Desert of Zin at Kadesh years later and the thirst of the people means they are moaning and striving with Moses he does not listen so well to God’s instructions, and makes a flawed human error.
Moses takes matters into his own hands. He believes he has the answer as he has performed this ‘miracle of water from the rock’ before. In his haste and anger he doesn’t follow God who says ‘speak to the rock…and it will give forth its water’, instead he takes the Rod of Aaron (implicating Aaron in the process) and strikes the rock not once, but twice. God in His mercy brings forth water for the thirsty Israelites. Numbers 20:1-13.
Because of this misdemeanour Moses does not arrive in the Promised Land– let us jump to the New Testament to a remembered verse of scripture for The Living Well. This formed part of the Commissioning Service for our Core Team in St Mary’s Nonington in July last year. 1 Corinthians 10:4 NLT
And all of them drank the same spiritual water.
For they drank from the spiritual rock that travelled with them, and that rock was Christ.
Like a stick of seaside rock has a town name printed throughout out its candy, so we as God’s children have His name – Jesus Christ – printed throughout our being. If we are tossed this way and that physically or emotionally the steadfast and true spiritual imprint of the Lord remains in our lives and is still our mainstay, our anchor, our plumb line, our rock. The very stuff of which we are made, Him in whom we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28
God who is ‘all over the place’ as He has the quality of being everywhere (omnipresent) is yet solid, centred and stable too. Able to bring fresh, moving, living water from static, solid, compacted, resolute stone. God is able to be at our heart and our centre, to travel and move with us in our wanderings and to be the perfect re-source for all our thirsts, desires, leadings and questionings too.
All Over the Place – Yet Centred in The One Place.
Stay and Travel with Him, He is going to Stay and Travel with You.
Rev. Lorraine Apps – Huggins – Chaplain