A Broken Church in a Broken World, and a Way Out

The world around us is broken - it has rebelled against God,
and God has taken away sight and the capacity to govern. 
All that is left is the fruit of man's sowing - the chaos of God's absence.

The church is broken because: "they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jer. 2.13)

"Living waters" - newborn waters, flowing fresh.
     How different from the waters gathered by man,
          which from the moment of their gathering cease in their newness.

How wonderful when the soul receives, fresh from the hand of God,
a word, a promise, a directive.
How wonderful a church where, as one person told me, "we went to every meeting knowing that God would move during that meeting."

This should be the continual portion of the child of God - fresh water, fresh bread, for every new day that unfolds.
A living contact with a Living God.

God is grieved with those who limit Him and take away from His omnipotence, - believing the things in the Bible "are not for today."
From there it is easy to move on to believe that in daily life
God's intimate revelation to His own was also something only for times gone by.

God is grieved, and longs for His people to know that:
     Those who seek Him will surely find Him.
          Those who listen will surely hear Him.
               Those who lift their eyes will behold things of a new and heavenly realm.

Like Israel we seem to have learned to dwell in a wilderness when there is a land of promise just  beyond us.
The words which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman come to mind -
"if thou knewest the gift of God." (Jn. 4.10)
There is the weight of eternity behind the words- 
     if, if, if only,
          "thou knewest."

Job  came to know- "I have heard ... but now mine eye seeth." (Job 42.5)
And an immeasurable distance separates the hearing from the seeing -
     forty and one chapters tell of Job seeking through the pain, 
          and the perplexity of his suffering, until his answer came.

For all God's children, the longing is the way, the tears are the steps, 
which lead us to a far better place than all that earth can spread before us. 

          Revelation of Life awaits us - and "God will make it plain."