oasis

i love writing.  blogs, short stories, poems, comments on facebook; you name it, i'll write it.  i almost always have some piece that i'm working on.  the following is a...well, i don't really know what you would call it, but it's just a reflection of some feelings i was meditating on in april. 

i think the idea was prompted by the fact that i had been on a water binge and had been drinking buckets and buckets of water everyday, but i still felt so thirsty all the time.  i had also been really dry (ironic, no?) in my relationship with God during that time and i desperately needed an oasis, both for my physical body and for my spirit.  the Lord in his mercy showed himself to me in a way that slapped me in the face!  duh!  the LORD is my oasis, forever and always.  God is so cool in the way that he uses the seemingly insignificant events in my life to reveal more of his character to me.  i love that!  so, without furthur ado...oasis:

where is my oasis?  certainly not in water.  there is darkness even in the shallowest of waters.  depth only increases the darkness that begins directly below the surface.  sometimes it feels safer to just keep my distance.  but sometimes i get thirsty.  like really, really thirsty.  so thirsty that i forget about the danger.  i drink and i drink and i drink but i can never quench the horrible thirst.  endless glasses of water meet my lips to no avail.  in a sea of dryness water is supposed to be a cool oasis, but it isn't always for me.  instead of quenching my thirst and providing sanctuary, it becomes the ocean i drown in; an unforgiving prison, devoid of air and comfort.  this elixir of life can make life hell.  one wrong move and i could easily be sputtering and struggling for breath.  it baffles me to think that the substance that keeps me living and breathing could also just as easily take away that life and breath.

so where is my oasis?  certainly not in air.  the air is fickle as a child.  ever changing, ever moving, never sitting still.  it's relentless blowing whips the world at its whim.  there can be no peace when air is around.  there can be no relief.  even my deepest of breaths cannot provide strength.  the wind carries with it the secrets of each town it blows through, each lonely cry, each shameful event.  there is no escape from the air.

so where is my oasis?  certainly not in people.  people let you down.  people are imperfect. people ruin beautiful things.  it is at the hands of many people that nations crumble and innocent are left for dead.  the meek are trampled by the prideful, the gentle are overpowered by the rough.  i will most definitely not find my oasis in people.

so where is my oasis?  certainly, in my Lord.  his people are made perfect in his image and their deepest stains are washed as white as snow.  his breath of life fills my lungs.  his fountain provides sustaining water, water that will becomes in me a spring welling up to eternal life.  he fills me so that i overflow.  the Lord is certainly my oasis.