In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three In One who brings us the way of His holiness.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
There was once a water carrier in India whose job it was to bring water from the river to his master’s house. Day after day, he would take two pots on a long pole down to the river, fill them up, and bring them back to his master’s house.
One fateful day, the water carrier stumbled and fell. When he fell, one of his water pots cracked a little.
The water carrier resumed his vocation, going down to the water, filling up his two pots and going back to his master’s house. The difference now, was that one of the pots – the cracked pot, only took back half of the water that it had been endowed with at the river.
One morning, before the water carrier went down to the river, the water pot spoke to the water carrier. It said, “I am ashamed of myself.” The water carrier asked “why?” The pot explained that it had felt bad ever since they day that they had fell. Ever since that day, the water pot had only been able to bring back half of the water it had been entrusted with.
“I long to go back to the days when I could bring back the full contents of what you had filled me with. Since I cannot go back to those days, I ask that you simply break me on a rock and throw me on the rubbish pile.”
The water carrier, seeing that the pot was distressed, said “I see that you are feeling bad. I tell you what. Today I will not fill you up with any water. Relax, take it easy. Today all I want you to do is to enjoy the ride to the river and back and to watch for the flowers along the way.”
Sure enough, the water pot watched all the flowers go by, but all the while it was fuming. “Watch the flowers? You have to be kidding me! You want me to watch the flowers and be even more ineffective than what I have been before? Now I can’t bring ANY water. I just have to wait and watch these stupid flowers.”
At the end of the day, the water pot again spoke to the water carrier. It said the same thing, “I feel ashamed of myself. I want you to stop using me. Just break me and leave me on the rubbish pile.”
The water carrier smiled a little and asked the pot, “Did you notice the flowers?”
The water pot shot back, “Of course I noticed the stupid flowers, but that has nothing to do with me.”
“Ahhh,” said the water carrier, “but it does.” “You see, two weeks after I had fallen I noticed that I was leaving a trail of water behind me. That day I took some wildflower seeds and I spread them along that side of the path. You have watered those seeds, which have become flowers, which I pick every day now when I am coming back. Now I do not only grace my master’s table with water, but with beautiful flowers as well.”
Now the obvious moral to this story is easy. It is simple. Quit your complaining about the fact that you are a broken vessel and let Jesus use you in the way that He will. Start appreciating that Jesus is using you to water the faith lives of the flowers along your way.
And like many obvious and simple morals, this one is true. Jesus does use you. But also like many obvious and simple morals, this understanding is only a shallow picture of the Gospel. The real Gospel is found just under the surface of this moral.
The Gospel is partially that God uses weakened vessels like you and I to do His work amongst people. But the Gospel underneath that is far more compelling. The Gospel underneath that is that God has not thrown us on a rock. He has not broken us. He has not left us on the rubbish pile.
That was the good news for the nation of Israel and that is the good news for us. In our Old Testament reading from Isaiah the nation of Israel had been beaten up. It had been enslaved. It had been occupied. And now it looked like this would never end. There was a feeling amongst those people of desperate brokenness. Many were probably crying out, “Just break me on a rock and throw us on a rubbish pile so that we don’t have to continue to think of what we were before.”
In our lives, it looks like that sometimes too. We look back with fond memories at things that used to be the way that life was. We look back the beginning of our relationships, at the beginning of our jobs, back to when our children listened to us or when our parents seemed to understand us. We look back at the beginning of our life with Jesus – and we think to ourselves, “if we could only go back to the way it was at first…”
But we can’t. Instead, we are confronted with our own brokenness. We are confronted by things that we have not done. We are confronted with things we have not been faithful in. We are confronted with the crack in the side of our lives that has been making us half as useful as we were before.
God comes in at that time and tells us to look at the flowers. He not only tells us to look at the flowers that we have watered, but He fixes our eyes on a time forward. He shows us the beauty of the Resurrected life in passages like our Isaiah passage. He doesn’t show us the way back, He shows us the way ahead.
The highway God shows to Isaiah is unlike any highway known at the time. During Isaiah’s time highways were lonely and desolate places. They weren’t busy interstates, but rather they were dark roads where danger loomed around every corner. But this highway is unlike any other highway. It is not dry, desolate, and dangerous. It is instead, filled to the brim with flowers and water. It is this highway that God invites us to. It is not a place that we are going back to. It is, instead, a place that we have never seen before. It is a place onward.
When Christ came into this world, He came into a place filled with sorrow and sin. He came into a place filled with dryness and desolation. And because of that, He lived out His life brining life to others. He came to bring us something new.
If you or I were put on a cross, surely, our response to the situation would have been one of looking back. We would ask ourselves if we could somehow transport our selves into a time machine and get back to a point where we were whole, where we could make different decisions and hope that they wouldn’t lead us to the same place.
But Christ didn’t do that. Instead of looking back, He looked on. He looked forward to a new reality. He looked forward to you and I living with Him in eternity. That is the Gospel. God does not bring us the way back, He brings us the way on.
