Decades ago, long before sunrise, I rode with my father -in-law Walt and my brother-in-law Mike Blank along endlessly winding Missouri roads to southwestern Missouri for some trout fishing.  I didn’t fish but watched the trout swimming about in the crystal – clear water of the Current River not being lured by the lures cast in front of them.  What was amazing, what I had never seen before, was that the water flowed as a full-fledged river from a spring fed pool out of a solid rock wall.

That is nothing compared to the river of the water of life the angel showed John in his vision in Revelation 22.  The water of life flowed crystal clear from the throne of God and of the Lamb, who is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  It was part of the new heaven and new earth.   The fulfillment of the promise in Isaiah, Peter and Revelation, “Look, I am making everything new.”

In baptism we were placed into the current of the river of God’s mercy, grace and life and salvation which flows through our life every day, enriching our life like the silt carried by flood waters enriches the land. The water of life in baptism and the water of life in the river is the same living water of which Jesus spoke in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well.  That water is the Holy Spirit- empowered message of Jesus Christ.  Jesus told the woman, “Anyone who drinks of this water that I will give him will never thirst again.  The water I give is like a flowing spring bubbling up to everlasting life.”  It emerges from the spring of the baptism font as a full-fledged river of God’s endless flood of grace.

In this case, it’s good to live in a flood plain, without levees, dams or dikes to hinder its life-giving flow.