Today's Devotional

December 13, 2004

Subject:  The Road Of Two Evils

Jeremiah 2:13 - "For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

Here's what we really have a hard time grasping:  when you're not doing God's business or in God's will on a matter, it's not that you're just not doing God's business or in the will of God, you're actually doing a second evil, "your own business," which happens to be outside of the will of God.  

See, God uses the fountain metaphor to describe Himself as a source that comes from a fountain.  Indeed, He is that source that serves like water to refresh, fill and satisfy us.  That water is ever-flowing.  God says that his people have committed the first wrong by rejecting the living waters that He offers.  Then because we rejected His living water, the second wrong was to go about making provisions for getting our own water.  While we can freely drink from the source of living waters, we instead have decided to create cisterns or big tanks to hold water.  And for all of our work, we find out that the cisterns that we build, can't hold water anyway.  What is God saying?  

I think it's the grace message.  God is saying, don't toil to build tanks to hold the water, simply drink daily from the flowing fountain of living waters.  See, when you commit the first evil of turning away from God/not drinking from His fountain, then your very next action, if it's not turning back to God, is always a second evil.  

So today, as God offers you a drink, don't decide to build a tank for the water.  Take a drink from the fountain.  Any other path leads you down the road of two evils.

Carlen