As I sit in my study in the city of Bath, the weather forecasters predict that we are about to experience heatwave conditions in the UK. Certainly, today is the hottest day of the year so far and the elderly among us (which includes me!) have been warned of the dangers of dehydration in the extreme heat. We have been advised that it is essential to drink plenty of water.

Perhaps this is an appropriate moment, therefore, to consider the importance of WATER for a healthy spiritual life. We discover, when reading the Bible, that STILL WATER is a picture of the Word of God. Interestingly, one of the twelve gates in the wall of the city of Jerusalem was named the WATER GATE and Ezra, the scribe, read from the Scriptures at this particular spot! ‘So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly of men and women . . . then he read from it in the open square that was in the front of the WATER GATE from morning until midday’, Nehemiah chapter 8 verses 2-3. When did you and I last devote such a considerable amount of time listening to a reading from the Scriptures?

A meditation upon what God says about His Word through Isaiah the prophet, ought to arouse a desire within us to read it more and obey its truth: ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but WATER the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it’, Isaiah chapter 55 verses 9-12.