We Are Like Swimming Pools
Living in the Midwest, I am eager for Spring to come. I don’t enjoy getting in my car and it feeling like a meat freezer in a butcher shop. I’m just not a Winter person. Perhaps that is why, when I woke up today, I was thinking about swimming. Swimming pools are fun; they just are. Swimming alone provides great exercise, but people bring the fun; many, but not too many!
The ruckus of people talking, toddlers in their water wings, kids competing to see how long they can hold their breath underwater, guys cannonballing to splash water on girls sunbathing. It’s packaged happiness. One consequence is that a lot of water splashes out of the pool, leaving the concrete wet near the pool and damp further out. This euphoria makes a good metaphor for our lives in Christ Jesus.
We can properly use a swimming pool as a type for us, because Jesus said that He will give us living water (John 4:14) and rivers of living water will flow out of us (John 7:38). So, if we now truly live in Jesus and He in us (John 14:20), then we should be as full of living water as a swimming pool is of tap water.
How horrible it would be to arrive at a pool and find it half-empty and covered in algae! Yuck! But that’s what happens when a swimming pool is not maintained. The stagnant water begins to evaporate, and the remaining water becomes unhealthy and even dangerous. A pool’s water must be circulated, filtered, and treated to remove toxins. The same is true for us to be healthy followers of Christ.
Our filtration system is alive. The Holy Spirit lives in us, and He helps us to be healthy. Among many other things, He shows us toxins that have crept in, He guides us on the path of righteousness, and reveals to us the life that is in God’s Word. Our responsibility is to exercise self-control and continually grow in holiness, separating ourselves from worldliness.
Just as explaining a swimming pool is nothing like an actual swimming pool, so telling people we are Christian is nothing like being a Christian. To experience a swimming pool, people must jump in. As believers, we are both set-apart from death, and draw people to leave their death and “jump into” the life within us, Christ Jesus, our Lord.
A refreshing swimming pool naturally draws people of all ages. We are walking souls overflowing with Living Water, so people are drawn to the Life in us. Some will hate us because they hate the Water, but others will be drawn to come in.
Some will feel a deep need to jump in, to experience Living Water. Our purpose, the reason why we don’t just zip up to heaven when we receive salvation (John 17:15-16), is to carry the streams of Living Water. The reason we exist is so people do not just step on damp concrete or walk on wet concrete, but dive in and are immersed in the Living Water of God.
This brings us back to the packaged happiness of a swimming pool. Around it will always be people who like to be near the water, but never want to get wet. Others will dangle their feet in the water, but never jump in. But there will be some who will jump in and experience the refreshment only found by being in the water. Jesus is the Water, and we are those swimming pools.
So, stay healthy, stay refreshing, stay attractive (spiritually 😉). The God of all Creation lives in those of us who believe in Jesus, and we live so that others will join us as children of God.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. - John 3:16-17 ESV
Photo by: Brandon Hoogenboom on Unsplash