Text and art by I. Lilias Trotter
Instead of the still circle of water I expected to see, it was all heaving and rippling in swelling circles. Then it stopped and grew quiet and while I was wondering if my eyes could have deceived me, the trembling began and all was repeated. Some periodic upburst from the hidden spring below – then all grew glass again. I never knew before what the “well of water springing up” meant. I thought of it vaguely as a springing all the time – but this is so much more like His way with our souls. A sudden rising and flooding of the under-lying life, and then a sinking back with stillness.
“Out of him shall flow” comes afresh these days, brought home by a landlocked backwater in the little river here, that only lets its stream filter slowly through a bank of stones instead of running free. The still pool of living water lies in every saved soul, keeping life within that little plot of a river. A river is wide open to its source, and as wide open to the needs lower down. We need barriers down, man-ward as well as God-ward – to believe for the outflowing as definitely as the inflowing.
