Soul-scape - Sea Take Two

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 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  Revelation 22:1-2

The seas, water, at the beginning in Genesis were described as sloshing and chaotically churning.  The waters, seas, at the beginning of creation collaborated with God to bring forth all that is seen and unseen.
The waters, seas, at the beginning of our Bible never are completely conquered, erased or eradicated but continue to flow.

The stream of creative and chaotic waters flow through all Scripture.  Our Bible is soaked and saturated with holy waters. 

This is true, as we saw a few days ago, with Jacob wrestling God, Noah's Ark, Moses parting waters of the Red Sea, Joshua parting the Jordan, Psalm 23, when the writer of Ecclesiastes says, "Everything is mist," which means everything is fleeting and fading.  Now in Revelation, near the very end, there is water again that nourishes and nurtures the trees (again an echo of Genesis) that are for the healing of the nations.

Water as healing. 

60 percent of your body is water.
71 percent of the earth is water.
When two hydrogen atoms say to a water molecule, "Hey, wanna hang out?" This chemistry is a basic building block of our lives and world.
While most of us can survive without food for a few weeks, if you don't drink water after a few days your life will cease to be.
Water flows through you.

Water, even as it is seen in the beginning as creatively chaotically collaborating with God, at the end there is God making use of water to heal everything.

E.E. Cummings wrote, "For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea". 

In that is our baptismal promise.  We remember when water touches our toes or washes around our knees or we dunk our whole body into the sea coming up gasping for air and dripping/drenched from head to toe.  Water helps us find ourselves.

Water can also be a place of release.  Letting go.

Ever set a bottle loose in the sea?
Ever find a shell on the beach that calls out your name?
Ever sink your feet into the sandy soil around the water or the muddy banks to remember that you and I are created, crafted from the combination of clay and water?

What do you need to lose in a good way right now?
What do you need to release?

A sense of perfection.
A calendar that has to be constantly full to say, "You are important".
A relationship that is wounding your soul.
A task that is causing you to be hurt rather than healed.

Everyone of us, every day, there is something we need to release in order to be healed.
We need to let go of clinging and white knuckling life so we can open our hands for the leaves of the trees that are for the healing of the nations and for us. 

What do you need to let go of?
Write it down.
Take a gulp of water.
Maybe head down to the water to release to the sea where the creative God still meets us in the chaos of our lives with healing and hope in these days.

Amen.