Kyle Dresback
Dear Friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about water lately.
No, not because I’m a northwest transplant to the desert (at least not entirely), but because my children spent several weeks preparing for their baptism earlier this month. In discussing with them the topic of baptism, we got to talking about the recurring role of water in the Bible. I have come to start thinking of water almost as its own discrete character in the narrative.
In Genesis 1 “the deep” is the deep waters, the dark and terrifying abode of unknown terrors in the ancient imagination. But God’s spirit sweeps over it as he divides it, tames it, and makes the waters hospitable to humankind.
Hospitable, that is, until the days of Noah, when the waters are turned back to their raging pre-creation state by a creator who laments the violence of his creation, cleansing his precious planet from human wickedness in order to make it hospitable again.
Think of the deep wells at which Isaac and Jacob fortuitously met their wives, carrying a perilous family blessing toward its fulfillment by a gracious providence; the waters parting during the Exodus as the Israelites were ushered in safety from their oppressors, little knowing the trials that awaited them in a parched desert; the waters of the Jordan into which both Joshua and Jesus himself ceremoniously stepped, both bearing God’s very presence along with rumors of a new kingdom; the stormy waters in Galilee that were stilled by a man in a scene strangely reminiscent of those waters back in Genesis 1.
How fitting that our familiar character makes a cameo as this story reaches its triumphant conclusion in today’s Revelation passage:
For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
’he will lead them to springs of living water.’
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’
The story that began with the formless “deep” ends with springs of living water. The waters of baptism serve as a wonderfully physical reminder of this old story and of our place in it.
In Christ,
—Kyle