Thoughts from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church • Birmingham, AL

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Old Testament: Ezekiel 47:1–9,12
Gospel: John 5:1–18
Psalm 46:1–8

“Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angel feet have trod?
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?”
Robert Lowry, c. 1864

The image of a river, I suspect, takes up more than half of my brain’s synapses, as I’ve always viewed life as a river. I grew up on the Tennessee River, in Decatur, Alabama (actually, IN the Tennessee River a good bit of time). Our parents saw that my two brothers and I learned to swim at an early age. They encouraged us to water ski and swim competitively on our school teams. We had as our playground the backwaters of the river in the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge near our suburban home.
  My late husband Lynn Daniel was also acquainted with a river, the one near where his ancestors settled in 1820 in northeast Alabama in the foothills of Appalachia. Now called Little River, it was known by the native Americans as Wolf Creek. From the high falls on its northern end to the sunny shoals at the canyon mouth, where his ancestral property has become federal parkland, we were intimately familiar with this river. 
Life is one Big Flow. Sometimes we float. Sometimes we flail against the current. Of course, we are all at least 60 percent water, so I know I’m not the only one for whom the image and physical properties of water are powerful. In the Church, our baptism (death/rebirth) is an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and its ritual is the beginning step in our spiritual journey as Christians. We are received into the fold of all other followers of Christ and make promises that will take a lifetime or more to carry out.
Ezekiel’s image is a delightful one: living water, crystal clear, with trees hanging with fruit on either side of its banks, flowing from the temple of God. I can see myself floating downstream in an inner tube, and that would be my idea of heaven. Splashing in the fountains of water that came down from the temple, yes, that would be me. The healing and cleansing properties of water are formidable, and the experience would be the ultimate refreshment. Just as Jesus healed the man at the pool of at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, my body will be restored to wellness. I look forward to rejoicing in the living water of Christ our Lord!

Martha Jane Patton