“Come, all who are thirsty, come to the waters”: a testimony

Isaiah 55:1-3,6-9 [NIV]

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
    listen, that you may live…

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways
    and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

When I was younger, I was a Girl Guide. One of the things I liked about being a Guide was their motto: Be Prepared!

I’m the kind of person who likes routine and order. I like to be organised, and I like to know what to expect and what is expected of me.

In this regard, my faith journey is no different to the rest of my life. I come from a tradition that encourages spiritual disciplines and I have been equipped with many tools along the way; things like beginning my day with prayer, journaling and other ways of reflecting on what God is saying to me and that help me notice God in action in the world and in my life, using lectio divina and other means to engage with the scriptures, concluding my day with the examen.

Be prepared. Be ordered. Be organised.

I work hard at keeping my life in order. I do what I can to ensure that my home is comfortable, that I have good food to eat, good clothes to wear. I look after my possessions, I mow the lawns and get my car serviced. I look after my health. I work on my relationships. I save to prepare for the future.

I work at keeping order in my spiritual life; I pray, I worship, I read the Bible and other Christian texts, I retreat with God whenever possible.

It all sounds great, doesn’t it? But the truth is, that is my life on a good day. And not every day is a good day. In fact, sometimes the good days are few and far between. Many of my days are disordered.

I’m not a great sleeper. I wake up tired, I struggle to get out of bed and run late, I rush to prepare breakfast to eat at work and leave the house with the kitchen in a mess. I get home too tired to cook a healthy meal, I stare at the TV because it is all I have energy for, and then I go to bed with an even messier kitchen, just to wake the next day more tired and more disordered.

Or there’s days when I get to work, full of vim and vigour and with a well-ordered to-do list, only to have my plans thwarted. The day goes by in a rush of busyness but nothing gets ticked off that list. The important things don’t disappear, they just build up and stress and anxiety kick in.

Sometimes I lose control in greater ways. Like the time my husband burnt out in ministry, and we had to live for a period on my part-time income. Or the time when, just five years into a ministry I was clearly called to, I left deflated, dejected, feeling like a failure, with nowhere to go. And then that space, not lasting days, or months, but years.

Sometimes, more often than I like to admit, my spiritual life is disordered. There are days when I can’t pray. There are days when I can’t focus to read the Bible. There are days when I realise that I can’t remember when I last prayed or even thought about God.

“Come to me. Come to the Water of Life, even when you have nothing to give.”

I have been in that space where I have come to God with nothing to offer. But when I look back on my life, what I discover is that when I am most vulnerable, God accepts and loves me as I am. Whether my emptiness is practical or spiritual, the Water of Life has shown up and provided what I need. The Water of Life has brought life.

We own our own home. We are not living on the street. We still have ability to buy good food, to have a bed to sleep in every night. I have a new and invigorating ministry. And God still, occasionally blesses my work and speaks through me.

God has still been present in every single stage of my life. God says come, it doesn’t matter what you bring. Come, I have the Water of Life and I will provide what you need.

Today we live in a time when anxiety-inducing events beyond our control seem to be running rife. We have had two years with Covid and are at a stage when we are experiencing its impact first hand. The misinformation that we hear from overseas and that experts now refer to as a new cult movement, is taking hold in our country. Our land of milk and honey has been rocked by natural disaster and terrorism. And now, to top it all off, that jolly Putin has gone and invaded Ukraine and the probability of a third world war has increased.

It is frightening. It creates great anxiety.

This is a time when I go to God and say, “God, I have nothing to give. I am afraid. I don’t know what to do.”

And then God reveals the closing words of today’s scriptures. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,” says God through Isaiah. “Neither are your ways my ways.” And I look back at those times of deep anxiety in my life and remember how God was in control, even when I could not see it. How, there were times in my life when I had to trust there was a sun in the sky, even when thick, black storm clouds hid it from view for days on end. When I look back, I give thanks for those wilderness times, because it enables me to know that however frightening and out of control our world might look, God is in control. We can give thanks and praise that we have a God that we can trust.

So, if you are a person like me who tends toward anxiety, I encourage you to take heart in the words God speaks through Isaiah: “Come. Even if you have nothing to offer. Come. I will provide. Trust me. Even if you can’t see it, I am in control and it is going to be okay.”

I like to be prepared. I like to be ordered. I like to be organised. But it is more than okay when I am not. Because, thank God, the world, God’s Kingdom and even my life are in safer hands than mine. They are in the hands of the God who creates, redeems and brings new life.

Me mihi ki te Atua: Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Sandra Williams
Minister.