by Jonas R. Knudsen
All who are thirsty,
All who all weak,
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life.
Let the pain and the Sorrow,
Be washed away,
In the waves of his mercy,
As deep cries out to deep.
For so long, and even now I have come to the fountain to gaze at it’s beauty and to admire it’s structure. I take measurements and calculate how much water it produces, but I dare not touch it! It’s only for admiring, for great men before me have put up the velvet ropes and the “NO SWIMMING OR DRINKING ALLOWED” sign. It’s for our protection because we couldn’t possibly bare the cool, clear, deliciousness of this water. So books have been written about it, and people have developed theories of what the water would actually taste like. There have been debates, divisions, and arguments concerning its nature, but very few have really tasted and touched this water.
I come to the fountain time after time to study it and every time I do I get a sudden urge to jump in. It pulls me to step over the velvet ropes and drink, to bathe in it. Now I go to a school of the Fountain, we study its maker, and the reason it’s there, we even take field trips just to look at it. We have speakers come and talk about how delicious the water tastes, but even so I doubt they have actually tasted it. I have read stories of men and women of old who have drank from the fountain. It sounds like the most wonderful experience, I’ve even heard of men that have never left the cool running water eventually becoming the water itself.
Sometimes I dream about the fountain. I can feel it’s cool water cascading down my face washing my soul clean. I can taste its crisp, clean water; so pure it refreshes the entire body… Then I wake up, and I feel dry and parched, like a fish out of water.
I came to the fountain today and as I sat amazed by it’s beauty I heard a voice. It was like the sound of many waters, it was coming from the fountain. It said “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” I got up and I stepped over the velvet ropes, which the great men before me had placed there. I began to take off my clothes and the voice said “Stop, come as you are!” so I stepped into the fountain, a rush of cold went thru my body, at first painful. “It hurts!” I cried “Yes, but only for a moment my child,” replied the voice. I began to feel an unspeakable joy wash over my body and I found myself diving in. The fountain had depths I could not fathom. I walked to the cascading flow and I drank. The water so pure I thought I would never have to drink again. And there beyond the velvet ropes I tasted and found the Lord to be good indeed.
“The fountain of the Word is not meant for looking, it’s meant for drinking!”
-Prof. David Needham
