Today's praise is for the pure, clear, fresh water God provides

 Maybe I'm thinking of it more because we are currently in such need of it here - 

with summer heat and spreading wildfires in our province. 

The sky is a strange, glowing, golden, gray, and it has me longing for water to wash it away, and put out the fires.  It also has me thinking about how I long for the fresh, pure water of refreshing in God's Word, and to dwell near the stream, letting my roots go down deep and be refreshed while everything around me is just 

DRY! 

I'm feeling a little dry myself. 

Psalm 42:1

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

It wasn't until quite recently that I noticed that the deer was not just stopping by the nice stream for a little lap of water: Oh look, a little stream, I think I'll have a sip... 

No, this deer is THIRSTY!  He's been running or he's been looking for water for a long time - He really needs it... 

He's DESPERATE! 

Are you desperate?  Are you parched by the dry winds of life, by the scorching heat of the world?

Just the day in, day out stuff of living as a Christian in a hostile land - you don't have to be facing lions in the Colosseum - 

just today's trials, setbacks,  & stresses will do it 

It makes me desperate for Refreshing.

And only God can do that!

And though water in the Bible is used for other illustrations, we primarily see it described as "living waters" - the stuff of life

Eternal Life - Unquenchable Life - In Christ

"...but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.  Indeed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (John 4:14)

And the Living Water is our Saviour - Life itself - Pure refreshment - a spring of living water (Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13) which we can and must drink from daily - over and over while we live in this dry, dusty, hostile world... 

We long for and desperately need His life-giving, refreshing water to enable us to stay strong, alive and bearing fruit in this this place - in the place He has you today.

Praise the LORD for His gift of Himself - the Life, the Spring of Living Water!