A few months ago, I took a walk through the woods on a fairly unkept and “new to me” trail. While the trail offered me more “nature” in the forms of thorns and thistles than desired, the walk did not disappoint, as the trail brought me in between a pond and a stream. The contrast was stark. The pond looked old - even dead if that is such a thing for a pond. The murky water had a film that spottily skimmed the surface and looked as if it was waiting to infect any onlooker. No life was evident, and even if there was, it would have been the type that no one would desire to encounter. The pond screamed death.

The stream was different. Dramatically so. The stream contained clear water that invited the onlooker to investigate. Where the pond lay dormant, groaning for some type of action, the stream seemed alive. The water moved as if it were dancing. Sometimes slow, sometimes quick, but all the time active. The contrast was remarkable, and it caught my gaze for quite some time and my attention even longer.

I was reminded of John 7:37 where Jesus shares, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”  The contrast of the pond and stream were snapshots of lives with and without Christ. The dark and murky pond is life without Christ. There is water, yet the water seems without purpose - just existing to one day evaporate and leave a minimal residue of where water once had been.  The river is life with Christ - a stream of living water. A life with purpose and movement towards ever-growing to be like Him and ultimately and eternally being with Him.

The reality is our lives are like the pond. Your pond may look cleaner. There may even be life visible, but ultimately that pond will become stagnant and evaporate. Our self-driven efforts simply will not sustain the ecosystem needed to keep the pond alive. The pond will die and with great consequence. Cemeteries and photo albums are filled with lives such as these. Lives that were lived without eternity in mind and that are now rendered as memories without any testimony of a relationship with Jesus Christ who alone makes eternal life possible.

As we begin the new year, which body of water is the one with which you identify? Christ invites you to new life with Him and my prayer is that you would accept the invitation to be transformed from a pond of death wrecked by sin to a stream of life quickened by Christ and His forgiveness. Regardless of the years of stagnation, He can stir the waters of your soul to new life today. He wants to give you life that only He can provide. No longer a life existing to die, but rather a life that was born again to live. May the new year bring such transformation to you.