Trying to Mix Oil and Water

     It's impossible.  You can't mix oil and water.  They separate and the oil forms a blob on top of the water.  It's gross.  It's like pouring hate into love.   They are opposites, repelling one another.  And such is life.  
     God calls himself Living Water.  I want to constantly drink from that fountain.  Living water.  The biblical description of that would be "fresh, flowing water, as of a spring or mountain stream, that revives and refreshes life."  Spring water and mountain streams are cool and refreshing, indeed.  Along their banks are lush green pastures and beautiful, thick foliage.  Trees grow strong there.  I want to drink and I want what surrounds me to be touched by it.
     Have you ever jumped into a mountain stream?  I remember being at church camp as a kid.  The pool was filled with the water from a nearby stream.  IT WAS C-O-L-D!!  But we LOVED it!  We jumped in and shivered and played and swam.  (Well, I held onto the side because I have never been a swimmer, but I played and had fun!)  Later in life we found a beautiful, secluded campsite in the Ocoee wilderness.  The most peaceful stream runs through it, and the water is cold and refreshing.  I remember being there one day with friends and the other husband was sitting in the edge of the water.  My daughter was playing in the water and put her cold hands on his back.  He screamed.  It took his breath away.  The point is, the coolness of the water is refreshing.  It gets your attention.  It cannot be denied.  Just like drinking in Jesus.
     Hatred, on the other hand, is like passing up that pure, clear water for polluted, nasty, stagnant water.  Hate.  Drinking up that filth, taking it into our minds and our bodies and allowing it to ooze out through the pores causing a stench that burns the nostrils of everyone around.  It comes out like fire on the tongue in the words that take aim and cause sorrow and pain when they land.  It infects the lives of all who are around and experience the horror of it.  Nothing thrives there. 
     This is warm water, not something that soothes your thirst, it makes you more thirsty, but since it is all you have, you keep drinking.  Have you ever grabbed that warm water bottle in your car on a hot day because it was all you had?  The water wasn't cool and refreshing, was it?  It continued to fill you, but it never soothed and quenched your thirst. 
     Have you ever been hated?  Really hated?  I have.  More than once in my life I have experienced the wrath and bitterness that erupts like molten lava from the life of the one who is filled with this stagnant filth.  In Mark 7 Jesus says, "What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that  evil thoughts come."  To list just a few things from the list there: greed, malice, deceit, envy, slander, arrogance.  I believe these things combine and thus breed hatred.
     So the question comes down to, what are you putting in?  Cool, refreshing, reviving, Living Water?  Or filthy, stagnant, warm, slimy water?  What is coming out?  Do you touch the lives of those around you with encouragement, so that their lives reflect your beauty and thrive?  Or do you destroy with your words?  Do you smell so that no one wants to be around you?
     Today the phrase, "where there is hatred, let me sow love," has reverberated in my head.  My flesh rebels.  My heart breaks.  I need a drink of clean, reviving, refreshing Living Water!