Wednesday, May 18, 2022 Fountain of Life

Back when we were in our child rearing years, we used to read the Psalms regularly with our children and wanted to have them get a thorough familiarity with them. One of the things we did was to let them choose a “title” for each Psalm based on some of the wording of it or something that seemed important about it. Psalm 1 was entitled “Contrast,” since it illustrated a contrast between the righteous man and the ungodly man. We also worked on memorizing one verse from each Psalm. It was a big project (150 Psalms!) and hard to keep up with, to be honest. We did end up with our own titles for each of the Psalms, but the verse memorizing was a little spotty.

Some of the titles were rather quirky. Psalm 96 became the Ent Psalm, because of the verse “Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the LORD.” You’d have to be acquainted with Lord of the Rings to understand that one. We also entitled one of the psalms “Legolas,” because of the mention of arrows (another LOTR reference). Psalm 18 was called “Superman” because there’s a verse that says “For by You I can run against a troop; by my God I can leap over a wall.” Occasionally I had to nix a title, but I allowed a fair amount of leeway because it gave them more of a sense of interest and “ownership” of the psalms.

Psalm 36 had the title “Fountain,” for verse 9: “For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.” And now we get to the subject of this blog post (finally!). We have two water fountains on our property, which seems like an embarrassment of riches. The fellow that built this house put them in – a hobby of his, apparently. There’s something so mesmerizing and calming about moving water. It’s a lovely sound and an even lovelier sight to see a fountain. And when the sun shines through it, the light intensifies and sparkles, constantly moving with the water.

Six years ago, both fountains had to be “retired” – temporarily we thought, because each needed some repair or parts replaced. But as the years went on, the project never rose to the top and the fountains became a distant memory. Until this year… Praise the Lord and hallelujah! My husband got the back yard fountain going a couple days ago and soon the larger one in the front will be back in business.

I realized that every time I thought about fountains, that verse from Psalm 36 would come to my mind. I guess even if the kids have forgotten those titles, some of them stuck with me. A fountain is continually replenishing the water flow, over and over and over. How sweet to think about the Lord giving us a fountain of life in Christ, continually replenishing His grace to us. In His light, we see light.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning to the refreshing sound of our water fountain. Ahhh…