During a time of prayer earlier this week, we learned that one of our apprentices is a seer—someone who receives visions and pictures in their mind’s eye for the encouragement and building up of the people of God. That Tuesday, the images they received all carried the theme of water. One in particular has stayed with me, and it feels especially meaningful as we near the end of Year Two of 3 Streams Institute.
They saw fortresses built out in a barren wilderness—refuges God’s people would run to when the enemies of God were closing in. When hope felt thin and the world seemed to crash around them, people left their normal lives and fled to the desert to find shelter. They ran to higher ground, to the Rock that is higher.
And yet—even there—the flash floods still came. Torrential rains still swept through, turning life into a soggy mess. The refuge did not stop the rain.
But the refuge was built to waste nothing.
Vast cisterns had been dug to catch the downpour. The rain was channeled, gathered, and stored—held until the people needed water to drink. What could have been only destructive became a lifeline for hundreds for years. Even in the rain, God is generous.
As we wrap up Year Two of 3 Streams Institute, I hope (and honestly, I suspect) we’ve been digging cisterns.
Our interns and apprentices have journeyed together toward Refuge—rooted in the Gospel, alive in the Spirit, formed by the liturgy. And even there, we’ve known storms: hardship, disruption, and plenty of rain. But we’ve also been learning to dig deep—making room beneath the surface, waiting on the Lord to fill what we cannot manufacture, trusting that God gives living water in God’s time.
And something holy has happened among us: we haven’t only learned to drink from the deluge ourselves. Again and again, what was gathered in one person’s cistern became a cool glass of water offered to another on a hot, wearisome day.
Bernard of Clairvaux said, “The person who is wise, therefore, will see their life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself…Today there are many in the church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare…You too must learn to await this fullness before pouring out your gifts, do not try to be more generous than God.”
May we be reservoirs, cisterns, that can hold the Living Water. May we drink deeply from the well of God’s Life and may we learn to give a cup of cold water from what we’ve received to those who are thirsty.
