“Cannon Ballllllllllll!” (SPLASH) If you have ever been to a swimming pool with a group of teenage boys, you have most definitely heard this phrase. The girls lying by the pool cringe every time it is shouted. But really guys, do you blame them? They aren’t interested in jumping in the water at the moment. They just want to work on their tans and to be left alone. The guys, on the other hand, are determined to simply make water go completely out of control anywhere and everywhere. They amaze their fellow comrades when they splash someone who seemed out of reach.
Now, you and I both know that when these guys were itty bitty, they weren’t so brave to plunge in the deep end shouting, “Cannonball!” let alone swim in the shallow end alone. Someone had to train them in the baby pool to walk in the water ankle high, then knee high, and then they begin to swim in the shallow end of the big pool, then in the deep end. At some point, they finally learned to dive. They slowly overcame their fear of water itself – and then of the “scary sharks” in the deep end.
For you and I to be that teenage kid because jumping in the water means we have to overcome our fears and experience life. Just ask Ezekiel, Jesus, and John who all discuss what water brings to us. Ezekiel 47:1-12 discusses a river that flows from the temple (one interpretation is “our body”) that starts as a stream ankle high, but turns into a deep river leading to seas that have life all around it. Jesus talks about drinking from wells that never run dry. Finally, John 7:38 states, “Out of your belly will flow a river of living water.” Water brings life to everything it touches.
I’m ready to give up my fears of the deep end – the uncertainties I can’t control. You will read that Ezekiel, Jesus and John only ever associated water with life. Water has been a representation of the Holy Spirit for ages. Jesus wants us be as comfortable with the Holy Spirit as we would jumping into the deep end of a pool. He desires us to stir up the water (Spirit) so much that we give life to those who like the sun (Son) to shine on them but they don’t want to get wet. We can’t afford to just splash a little water on ourselves to keep us cool. We have to jump in with the Holy Spirit who brings life – life that overcomes our deepest fears, our most extreme anxieties, or the overwhelming fact that we won’t always be in control of where the water goes when we jump and yell Cannon Ballllll!!
~Matthew Lynch
Christ Fellowship member