ARE YOU A RESERVOIR OR A RIVER?

Today’s message is born from a question I heard at Mass Yesterday “are you a reservoir Christian or a river Christian?”

The biggest dam in the world holds over 39 billion cubic meters of water in storage. That is however not it’s true merit, rather the generation of over 22000MW of electrical power using that stored water is the real deal. To give context, that is enough power to meet the energy demands of an entire country such as Sweden.

The first question arising is “what are you storing? Reservoirs can hold many things: fuel, water, chemicals, food, poison, the list is endless. Until an outflow stream is opened from these reservoirs, the existence of those stores are non-beneficial. However, once outflow starts, the essence of what is going round matters. It therefore matters what we store as reservoirs because that is the essence any outflow will bear.

What essence then are you carrying round? Hate? Pain? Dishonour and disloyalty? Suspicions? Fear? Or can we find love? Peace, Joy, self control? Just because you are called to be a river does not mean you can carry anything around. The trees around your banks, representing the individuals and systems within your scope of influence, have roots reaching into you. That is why you cannot afford to carry anything other than what flows from the Sanctuary, from God himself.

By all means, absorb and store as much as you can: inspiration and lessons gleaned from the word of God and life. But staying as a reservoir only means possessing volumes of ‘potential power’ – that does not reach anyone until it begins to flow out like a river. We are called to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’, that is not achievable at a distance because you can’t make disciples unless there is established contact. You need to become a flowing river.

#sly