You might be
wondering how a colander- and a mountain stream relate to each other? Well, God
explained a thing or two about this to me.
Both images
have a powerful source that is providing water to flow to the land further down.
The colander however has holes in it and when the water flows through it, the power
of the current is stopped and the water gets separated and seems to leave the
colander all over the place. If not careful, it gets quite messy.
The stream
flowing from the melted ice at the top of the mountain, rushes its way down and
sometimes gets separated for a bit into flowing creeks and finally the creeks
find each other again and pour themselves out into one flowing river or into
the ocean.
So what is
it that I’m getting at? The powerful water source comes from God Himself,
similar to Ezekiel 47. They both have that in common. They also have in common
that from that source it gets separated and in the end it will get together
again into one river or ocean. The way it gets separated and back together is
what makes the difference.
The colander stream:
Here you
see tiny holes that causes the water to have a funnel effect. It loses its
strength because there is a massive separation going on. This makes the stream
vulnerable, turbulent and unpredictable as it tries to find its way through. In
the spirit I could see these holes as:
1) The divisions within the body of
Christ. We have taken the perfect, complete and powerful stream of Living water
and have started to block out what we found was not as important or we couldn’t
comprehend and so we created…
2) The individual box thinking. We came
up with thoughts and ideas that WE find ourselves comfortable in and in that process
started to put limits on the wholeness that God is. We humans decided to push
the stream of Living water through the holes that we made in our limited
thinking and within our comfortable lives. We have the need to understand
everything and when the things are not going the way they suppose to go, we
draw conclusions and come up with our own solution or idea about it. This is
what we push out and bring into this world. It loses its power, effectiveness
and it spills a lot.
The mountain stream:
Here is a
separation going on that is a bit different. The current remains powerful as it
is streaming itself down. We can see it as conductors through specific areas
before entering into its fulfillment…the place it needs to be to provide the
Living water into the world. Translated into the Christian lives we can see the
following:
1)
“So Christ himself gave the
apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his
people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be build up until
we all reach unity in faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become
mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (-Ephesians 4:11-13)…Which brings
me to…
2) The individual journey. We are all unique, there is no one
exactly like us. So God takes us all apart from time to time to equip us for
the next river or ocean He has for us. It is that uniqueness, skills and
talents that we developed with God, that adds value to the river or ocean to
bring the Kingdom of God in its fullness into this world.
Hopefully
does the question: “Are you a colander stream or a mountain stream?” make more sense
now. For me I can say that in the past 6 years God certainly broke many
box-thinking holes from me. Looking at myself now I know that I am still work
in progress, but I finally became a solid mountain stream. I know God has
prepared me and I feel, see and know that I am ready and on my way to start to
flow towards a river or a ocean. I am excited, prepared and ready for my next intermediate
piece towards my ultimate destination.
I hope I
get to meet you there, I’m curious about your story’s!…
Many
blessings from me to you.
