“All my springs are in you”

Psalm 87 delights in the city of Jerusalem, for the city of Jerusalem is the place where God’s temple resided.  It is the place where people came to worship God and to have their sins forgiven.  You could say that all of God’s goodness toward his people flowed forth to them from Jerusalem.

Psalm 87 concludes with a particularly moving line: “Singers and dancers alike say, ‘All my springs are in you.’”

Those who led Israel in worship announced that the springs which nourish and refresh our lives flow forth from the place where we meet God.

Jonathan Hill remarks, “The beauty of a spring is that it brings life to everything near it.  It waters the landscape and gives vegetation an opportunity to thrive.  It brings cool refreshing water to those who come and drink from its pool.  And, if a spring is big enough, it does more than water those that are close.  It turns into a stream and wanders down the landscape to water those far from its initial offering.  It sends water cascading down the hillside in a waterfall to those below.”

When we meet with God—when we come before God in worship—we come to the spring that nourishes and refreshes our lives.  But it doesn’t stop there.  When we meet God, the spring that fills us flows through us to bring love and hope and goodness to those who may still be far from the spring’s initial offering. 

In The Way to Love, Anthony DeMello writes, “Take a look at a rose.  Is it possible for the rose to say, ‘I’ll offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people’?  Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds it rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light?  It could do that only by ceasing to be a lamp.  And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature—even to the one who seeks to cut it down.  This is the first quality of compassion—its indiscriminate character.”

By the very nature of meeting with God, the Spring that fill us splashes out of us to refresh others.

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