The Reedy River which runs through downtown Greenville, SC is “the historically most polluted river in South Carolina” In June of 96′ a huge pipeline broke and dumped close to 1 million gallons of diesel into this precious river and to this day we are still trying to recover not only from the the spill but from every other pollutant that finds its way into the river. All that to say The REEDY RIVER is not where you want to drink straight from the stream.
And Yet, as I walk downtown and see the lives of the people around me, I see them drinking from this “river of death”. They stand at the bottom of the falls with their mouth wide open, just guzzling down this “murkey water”. When all around the city their are beautiful fountains of clean life giving water and yet so many eyes are blinded to them. I say this all, of course, metaphorically.
The anology I am trying to draw here is this. The first Adam, the Adam we see in the Garden of Eden was born of the flesh and to this we are still born of the flesh. We crave what the flesh desires and that is all the things that the world entices us with whether that be sex, drugs, money, fame, the list goes on an on. The people I see around the city are just drinking in this life style and love it. They don’t see anything wrong with it and there is more than enough of it go around, they can just guzzle it to their hearts content. Unfortunately this life style leads to death and hopelessness. Where as there is a spring of Life called Christ and He said that if we drink of Him we will never thirst again. His well will never end up dry and we won’t have to keep coming back to get more and more. He is our more and more.
Christ, became the Second Adam. He had a flesh but wasn’t born of the flesh (you know the whole Christmas story…) anyways He was born of the Spirit and those who claim to know Him and follow Him are born of that same spirit. We put to death that which is of the flesh and arise to that which is of the Spirit. (Just read Romans 8 for what Paul had to say on this issue)
Like I said previously there are all sorts of fountains around the city, literally but more important figuratively. We are those fountains, we have the Spirit living in us. We as the Church are the Body of Christ and we can offer life giving water to those who thirst. We can save them from themselves and from passing this “hell” into others. I pray that you join me and the rest of the Body in this fight and continue to offer life giving water to those you come into contact on a regular basis. Amen.
