“He makes the springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains…The birds of the air nest by the water; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from His upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of His work.” Psalm 104:10-13
These early days of Spring are wonderful. The warming days gently wake the earth from her winter slumber. The grass starts standing a bit more spry, and the sounds of the many returning birds calling out their vernal greetings fill the air. Of all the equinoctial wonders, my favorite is the water; the frost loosens it’s icy clutch and the small brooks start to sing, splishing and splashing, dancing away to the sea. As the Psalmist sings, they run “down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them,” (Psalm 104:8).
I think it is this “assignment” of the springs that has always intrigued me. We have two swamps on our property that possess artesian wells that bubble up out of the ground. These two swamps are completely independent of each other, being divided by a continuous ridge of high ground. One of these swamps drains into a little creek to the east which then bends south. The other drains straight north. As I’ve ventured my way through the swamp grasses following the little paths of water it seems amazing to me that these two modest trickles, though apparently independent and heading in opposite directions, travel varied courses only to finally end up meeting several miles north at Indian Lake. From their they unite in a small stream which pours into the Shiawassee River, meeting many other tributaries along their way to the mighty Lake Huron. And from there it continues! The Huron goes to Lake St. Clair, then to the St Lawrence River, and on to the Atlantic Ocean and the Seven Seas!
As simple as this little wonder may seem, it offers a striking and tangible example of small beginnings destined to greatness. “You may seem harmless, now, little Spring, but wait until you are thundering with your fellows over the banks of the Niagara!” In this modern world it often seems the Christian Church is heading in opposite directions, small, divided, and harmless. But the Lord, who with a Word made and governs all, who declares the end from the beginning, has declared “the Kingdom is at hand!” He described it as the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed, which falls to the ground and seems lost, but grows to be the Greatest of All the trees in the garden. He has declared that “the Earth WILL be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” (Isaiah 11:9). As we labor in our small, sometimes feeble and hidden, efforts to build the kingdom, we should be encouraged that our works, like the modest springs, have “a place…assigned for them.” This destination is great and wonderful and incontrovertible. We may or may not see it with our own eyes, but like the springs, our faithful work has the Lord’s promise of Life upon it, that in His time it will be “vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number – living things both large and small,” (Psalm 104:25). This is a “hope, a future, and an expected end” that not even a red dawn on the second Rome can subvert.
Labor with Hope, Saints. The Lord calls you to Glory.
