My dream. God’s promise
The water that I will give will become in them
A spring of water gushing up to eternal life. John 4:14
Read Isaiah 35:1—7
Every doctor or physician who looks at a decrepit body must wish for it to be vibrant with life, seeing, hearing, leaping, singing. Every farmer looking at drought-stricken land must hold out for the day it will be soaked, shooting green, growth bursting out of the ground. Jesus once looked upon a woman like that: you’re a desert and I’ve come to water you into life; I give this living water. This must be a real insight into the mind of God when God looks upon the whole creation, when he promises still that he will come to it for its renewal. It will, surely, be a place suited for Jesus himself to live in. And he, I imagine, will again say, as he said to that woman, ‘Will you give me a drink.’[1]
Maker of heaven and earth, of streams and gullies, of carolling magpies and too many birds for me to know — but they sing, just the same; and giver of life, all life, of vitality and of walking and leaping and praising God; of the beautiful form of man and woman; of everyone and everything I have seen today: how I long to see everything and everyone at their best, everything and everyone I have seen today. When the rains stop and my body ages and falls sick, how I long for that day. I still know, in my frailty, that you have put such a mark of ownership on this creation that you came into it and inhabited it at the coming of Jesus. And in him and his self-giving, when he endured all that spoils and wastes God-given life, you placed on life itself a blood-sealed promise of its renewal, its fulfilment, of our renewal, of mine. It is the promise of the renewal of all things. So this hope is not my dream: it is your promise.
[1] John 4:7