Listen

“Look! I’m coming soon. My reward is with me, to repay all people as their actions deserve. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Favored are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right of access to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.”

Revelation 22:12-14

Think

We use water for so many things – to drink, to cook, to bathe, even to generate power for vast networks of homes, businesses, and institutions. We also use it to wash everything from cups to cars, bowls to babies. We plunge our clothing into tubs and scrub shirts and dresses and towels clean (although most of us use machines for that nowadays).

In the book of Revelation, John writes of his visions, coming to the end with words from Jesus himself: “Wash your robes! That will make you clean enough to come to me!” It’s tempting to think of this as a reference to baptism, but earlier in the book we learn that the robes of the righteous glow brightly because they have been washed not in water, but in the blood of the Lamb. Like the water and the blood that flowed from Jesus’s side at his crucifixion, these are two potent images of salvation: Living Water and Blood of Christ.

Ellen Di Giosia

Pray

Oh Living Water, bring me to you by the power of your life-giving body and blood.

Make me clean, that I may see your kingdom in all its glory.

Amen.

Go

Did you hear it?

The Living Water, rushing all around and flowing into the ocean of God?

Follow it there, and immerse yourself in God’s love.