Tuesday October 25, 2011
As I was canoeing down the Tippicanoe River, I noticed some openings along the river, I decided to take a side trip into one of these openings and didn’t stay long. What happened is that the water went into these openings, but stayed in these areas and developed swamps with the stagnant water that just sat there and began to stink. Trees had fallen into these places and had begun to rot along with weeds and other stuff. It smelled like rotten fish and garbage and I had to get out of there. Fresh water had flowed into these places but just sat there and caused everything around it to die.
Ezekiel continues on in describing the flowing of the river by defining water that had gotten off the track and ended up in a still place. “But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.” (Ezekiel 47:11 NIV). When we are not reading the word of God, what we do know stays in our lives and begins to form swamps and marshes in our lives. We hear ourselves saying, “I am not gettig anything out of my reading” or “I feel like I’m not growing.” It could be that the word is not entering our lives or that it is not having an impact in being put into action that is causing us to spiritually rot away. It is a daily life of taking in the word and allowing that daily word to impact our attitudes, the words we speak, our actions that we take, and our thoughts. It is only then that we find ourselves in the flowing river of life and not in the swamps of death.
Today on this journey, be careful not to move into the calmer places of life, only to find out that we have settled for a swamp.
