“For with you is the fountain of life…”

From the beginning of the book to the end the river flows.  The river of life, that is.  It’s no wonder, when God made the Garden of Eden, “a river watering the garden flowed from Eden [and] from there it was separated into four headwaters” making the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Genesis 2:10-14).  It was modeled after heaven: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.  On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.  And the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse.  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him” (Revelation 22:1-3).  Milton’s great poetic milestone called Eden Paradise Lost after the Fall for obvious reason.  Following the example of heaven, we can only imagine how breathtaking Eden was.

But it’s the river of life, or more pertinently, the fountain of life we want to consider.  And it runs throughout the text of Scripture.  King David began Psalm 36 talking about “the sinfulness of the wicked” (v.  1).  But after four verses he suddenly shifts to God’s love that “reaches to the heavens [and his] faithfulness to the skies” (v. 5).  Included are his righteousness and justice in the next verse.  Further down, he describes how men of high and low estates “feast on the abundance of your house,” and that they “drink from your river of delights” (v. 8).  Not being one to habitually deprive myself of joys and delights in this life — after all, didn’t God say that he “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17)? — my mind runs wild with imagination of the delights in God’s river.  It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, that if our current frail and failing bodies and wandering minds can enjoy the delights he gives us here, we will certainly need new resurrected bodies and completely restored minds to enjoy those delights that come straight from heaven itself!  But again, we miss the point: the source, the fountain of life, is God himself.

With a God this good, who wants to share all the wonderful good he has, how could, why would anyone or any nation “change its gods” (Jeremiah 2:11)?  But that is what Israel did.  “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (v. 13).  The contrast could not be any stronger.  One the one hand you have a spring that bubbles up on its own, and runs toward you.  No work, no effort.  But cisterns are different — they must be dug, which is hard work.  Then water from another source must be hauled and carried and dumped into the cistern.  But these cisterns can’t even hold the water they’re supposed to, multiplying the continual drudgery necessary to maintain them!  Does that sound like a delight?

Jeremiah also says it very plainly: God is the spring of living water, of life.  David echoes that: “For with you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9).  Jesus admitted as much.  To the woman he met at the Jacob’s well, he said, “…whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).  And this is life with incredible joys here and unending delights in heaven.

But lest we become like the Dead Sea that receives water but has no outflow, God doesn’t give us his river, his delights and pleasures, only to be consumed by us as if they were exclusively ours.  Ours, yes, but not exclusively.  They are ours for a purpose.  Proverbs 10:11 begins it: “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.”  13:14 says, “The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.”  14:27 adds, “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life” with the same result.  And “understanding is a fountain of life to those who have it” (16:22).  So why has God streamed these assets to us as part of his river?  For us to do his work, to be his witnesses, to appreciate all the good things he has, to bring healing to the nations one person, one friend, one contact at a time.  That’s the way it works for most of us — one conversation at a time, one day at a time.  And in the end, we see a river of God’s testimony and faithfulness flowing behind us, our wake making an impact on those around us.

Is God’s fountain reaching you with all its delights?  Are you sharing them with those around you?