The River That Got Deeper as It Went

Years after the valley of bones, Ezekiel was still living in Babylon, a long way from home. Back in Jerusalem, God's Temple was a heap of black stones. The soldiers of Babylon had burned it down, and weeds grew where the priests used to sing.

Then God carried Ezekiel home in a vision, to a high mountain in Israel. On the mountain stood a Temple again, whole and shining. A man who gleamed like bronze waited at the gate with a measuring line in his hand.

He led Ezekiel to the Temple door. Water was coming out from under it.

Not much. A trickle slid out from the right-hand side of the doorstep, ran past the altar, and wandered off toward the east. (Most people who find water coming in under their door run for a mop. This was a different kind of house.)

The man walked east beside the water and measured a thousand cubits. (A cubit is the length from your elbow to your fingertips. A thousand of them is about as long as five football fields.) Then he led Ezekiel into the stream. Splash. The water came up to his ankles.

Another thousand. Up to his knees.

Another thousand. Up to his waist, tugging at his robe.

Another thousand, and now it was a real river, deep enough to swim in. Nobody could have walked across it.

"Son of man," the bronze man asked, "have you seen this?"

He brought Ezekiel back to the bank, and Ezekiel looked. Trees now lined both sides of the river.

"This water runs down to the Dead Sea," the man said. "When it gets there, the salty water will turn fresh. Wherever the river goes, living things will swarm. There will be fish of every kind, so many that fishermen will stand all along the shore, spreading out their nets to dry."

(The Dead Sea is so salty that you can lie on top of it and bob like a cork. No fish lives in it. If a fish swims in from the river Jordan, it dies.)

"The swamps and marshes will stay salty," the man went on. (God kept some salt on purpose. People still need it on their supper.)

"Fruit trees of every kind will grow on both banks. Their leaves will never wither, and their fruit will never run out. Every month they will carry a new crop, because their water flows from God's house. The fruit will be food, and the leaves will be for healing."

Then the vision ended, and Ezekiel was back in Babylon with dry feet. The Temple was still rubble. The Dead Sea was still dead.

God's people did come home, and they built a smaller Temple, but no river ever ran out under its door.

At a great feast, a man stood in the Temple courts and called out, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!" He promised that rivers of living water would flow out of everyone who trusted him. He even called his own body a temple. After he died on a cross, a soldier's spear opened his side, and out came blood and water, the way the water had come from the side of God's house. On the third day he rose from the dead.

Many years later, Jesus' friend John saw the river one more time, in a vision of God's city. It was clear as glass and flowed from the throne of God and of the Lamb. The tree of life grew on its banks, and its leaves were for healing the nations.

The Lamb is Jesus, and the river runs from him.