The water has remained healed to this day.

 

Tuesday, October 17, 2023


Psalm 106:1-24

2 Kings 2:15-3:3

Matthew 13:18-30


Observance: Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr (d. c. 115)


The water has remained healed to this day.


We constantly go to our loving Father in heaven to ask for blessings. But if we are confident about the delivery of our requests, how confident are we of the permanence of those blessings?


Elisha has been told about the poisonous water of Jericho. He goes to bless the water in the name of the Lord – to make the water holy. And what Elisha does is something that priests do up to the current day when preparing holy water. He adds salt, and proclaims the word of the Lord, the word that says that there will be no more death or miscarrying from this water.


With the water we have in this life, we need to add salt, to stop it from going green. There are plenty of things that go into the tap water of any city or town with a somewhat-capable local government. But there is another water-source, another spring of life from which we can drink, and this is what Jesus offers us.


Anyone who drinks from the brackish water of sin and death find in themselves a wellspring of sin and death. But those who drink from the well of life find that they have a spring of water welling up within them, welling up into eternal life.


This wellspring of life, drawing as it does from an eternal source, will never run dry. We must constantly go back to Jesus to drink our fill, but Jesus is forever, and we will never run out. The blessings that God gives us likewise are eternal. Prayers for the presence of the Holy Spirit, for God’s wisdom, for peace, love and joy, for an increase of faith, for protection from the devil – God doesn’t dole out just enough for today, come back tomorrow for your next ration, thank you very much. What happens is that we get a taste of what God has given us, and we like it, and so we keep going back asking for a bigger amount.


The water in Jericho is healed even to this day. Even greater is the healing of your soul, of the promise of salvation – that blessing is eternal.

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