An especially odd creature from the animal kingdom is the lungfish. Resembling an eel, this four-foot long animal can survive in areas of the world where droughts are prevalent, evaporating thriving lakes into murky mud holes until everything becomes a dried-up basin. In these dry times the lungfish buries itself into the muddy ground and forms a thick cocoon around its body. It then proceeds to hibernate, sometimes for years, until the rains return and it can break loose from its self-imposed prison to thrive once again in the life-giving water of this fickle lake. At times I wish I were a lungfish! How simple Life would become if we could avoid its dry times by building a thick wall and burying ourselves into the ground as protection from civilization and circumstance. Sadly, we do in fact try this. Except rather than a spittle-based cocoon, we coat ourselves with a false-self, an imposter of our true identity, a glittering image with plastic eyes and a pasted smile. We smile hard though we hurt inside. We’re a big bully when terrified. We incessantly accrue wealth, though inwardly we are impoverished. We build our cocoon thick, so that everybody will like us but nobody will know us, believing thus that our inner child—our true self-- cannot be harmed by Life’s hurts. We can hide behind this shell our whole lives, admired by some and feared by others, but surging with self-hatred by this quarantined life of self-imposed hibernation—surviving, but never truly living. We wait for the moment when the rains return and it is at last safe to come out of hiding, but that day never arrives, because circumstantial life will never be safe. God wants you to come out of hiding. He is promising rain that can melt this wall you have concocted and free you to truly live. This saving rain does not downpour from outside the shell, but from within--He promises to be a well-spring inside you, freeing the inner child to safely emerge and giddily slosh through the puddles of His fervent love. Today, stop being an eelish lungfish that waits for the dryness of daily life to cease before you choose to emerge from your dormant slumber; Trust God’s Well-Spring within, heed His All-Clear, and emerge from your shell to thrive in the lake of His Saving Grace. “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Instead, the water I give them will become a spring of water within, welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 10:32:28 +0000
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