Glad

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

    the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

Psalm 46:4-5, NIV

The Spirit inspired the psalmist’s imagination--Jerusalem had no river. Thus the need for Hezekiah to construct a tunnel for water in preparation for Sennacherib’s siege. Water was life, like the Nile was for Egypt. Yet here, Jerusalem would have a river. A river that sustained life, was provision in siege. Here, a picture of security, of provision. Also too, a picture of peace, for that is the way that God uses it through Isaiah (Isa. 48:18; 66:12). Peace like a river.

Peace jars from the opening verses that speak of water foaming, terrible in its wrath, of mountains tumbling…. Here there is a river of gladness. Has God taken the very things that were against us and turned it into joy? Or has his outside river invaded the brokenness? Gladness is promised, no matter what mountain fell.

Yet, water we have to drink. Life is given only through taking of it, drinking of it. Can you take this gladness, this joy, right from his hands? Sit yourself down in your thirstiness, and take from his hands. The one who draws from the well of himself to offer living water (John 4). The well of himself, the fathomless joy of a God who is perfectly good, who exists before and after all sorrow. Drink of the overflowing joy of the Triune God, a joy so great it had to create to share. The joy of the Living Water himself. 

Take, drink. Feel his joy coursing through you, from his own hands.