Water is a common metaphor for God

• Water is one of the most common metaphors for God in the Hebrew Bible, and is used to convey a range of experiences: being nourished by life-giving rain; being swept along by a powerful river; joining in the flow of justice. Just as a body of water can buoy us, refresh us, and sustain us, it can also become fearsome in a storm and overwhelm us. This can be a powerful metaphor for our own experiences of the sacred. Sometimes we seek spiritual nourishment; we long to drink from Peleg Elohim—the “God River.” At other times we feel buffeted by the waves of our life’s ups and downs, and seek reassurance, as in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “When you pass through the Waters, I am with you.” Water is life-giving, essential, and powerful; sometimes beautiful and sometimes scary. Just like life. Just like God. Some Biblical water names for the Divine include: Wells of Liberation, Deep, Fountain of, Source/Wellspring of Life . Rabbi Toba Spitzer
• Augustine describes the Holy Spirit as the ocean. We are a sponge, floating and saturated, in the sea. In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophets speak of the out pouring of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah wrote, “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams. (Isa. 44.3-4) In the Pentecost story. St. Peter quoted the Prophet Joel, “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2.17-18, citing Joel 2.28-9) All of creation is dripping wet with divine presence, as if it were soaking in an ocean or a flowing fountain. Like water poured out from a pitcher, the life of the Spirit is poured into the prophets. Fr. John P. Arnold
• One of the most common biblical metaphors for God is water. In Psalm 92 we read: “My soul thirsts for God.” And in Psalm 36: “You give us drink from the stream of your delight.” The prophet Isaiah describes God as that which will “satisfy your soul in drought … and you shall be like a watered garden.” The divine source of life is described elsewhere as both “The Fountain of Living Waters,” and as “The Well of Liberation.” In these and similar verses, the verbs describing divine action are vastly different than those attributed to GOD IS A BIG POWERFUL PERSON. Water does not command or judge. It flows and irrigates, nourishes and sustains.  What does GOD IS WATER suggest for our spiritual practice? This metaphor invites us to identify when and how we become spiritually “dry,” and how we might irrigate our parched souls. It allows us to think of prayer as a way to access this “stream of delight.” We can reflect on the ways in which we are created b’tzelem Elohim — in the image of God — and how the life-giving waters that fill our bodies connect us to the source of life in all other living beings. When we encounter challenging decisions, we can ask for help in aligning our actions with the godly flow of the universe. Rabbi Toba Spitzer
• God is a spa-bath of water and we are all individual bubbles. Phil Collins
• God is the color of water. Water doesn’t have a color. James McBride

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Water is a magical divine gift

• Pure air, good water, sunshine, the beautiful surroundings of nature…these are God’s means for restoring the sick to health. Ellen G. White
• Water is God’s tranquilizer. Diana Vreeland
• Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God’s creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, “And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit. John of Damascus
• Water is the formless potential out of which creation emerged. It is the ocean of unconsciousness enveloping the islands of consciousness. Water bathes us at birth and again at death, and in between it washes away sin. It is by turns the elixir of life or the renewing rain or the devastating flood. Scott Sanders

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We thirst for God…

• The soul’s deepest thirst is for God Himself, who has made us so that we can never be satisfied without Him. F. Bruce
• Doesn’t every encounter with God only cause us to thirst for Him more? Francis Chan
• A thirst for the infinite is indelibly present in human beings. Man was created to have a relationship with God; we need him. Pope Benedict XVI
• As starving men crave a crust of bread, as choking men thirst for water, so do the righteous yearn for the Holy Ghost. Bruce R. McConkie
• God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. Aiden Wilson Tozer
• Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• To hunger and thirst after righteousness is when nothing in the world can fascinate us so much as being near God. Smith Wigglesworth
• God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). We may imagine we want a thousand different things, but God is the one we really long for. His presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing. Randy Alcorn
• In the desert we rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today’s world there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life. And in the desert people of faith are needed who, by the example of their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive. Pope Benedict XVI

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…and God is the water that quenches that thirst

• Man can’t do without God. Just like you’re thirsty, you have to drink water. You just can’t go without God. Bob Marley
• The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. Isaiah
• If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it. Rumi
• But to those whose thirst for life has been quenched for ever by drinking from the stream of immortality that flows from far away beyond the world of the senses, whose souls have cast away the threefold bondages of lust, gold, and fame. Swami Vivekananda
• In a dry and weary land where there is no water, He is Thirst Quencher Along the never-ending borders of the wasteland He is a bottomless water pot, full to the brim Thirst Quencher is everything the world has longed for All that creation so long groaned for He gives relief to the parched traveler and makes thirst a distant memory Deserts line up, in succession, to be made green Full, flourishing, and whole Dead forests are slaked, then resurrected Things that were once lifeless and long forgotten are now renewed Alive, and bursting again with the promise of eternal tomorrows And just when all containers seem to be nearing empty Or spent The fountains of the great deep suddenly burst forth Proving once again that there is no longing he cannot sate No thirst he cannot fill to overflowing. Robin Zaruba
• No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Charles Spurgeon
• A thirsty person is happy when drinking, and not depressed, because the spring is inexhaustible. You can satisfy your thirst without exhausting the spring; then when you thirst again, you can drink from it once more. Ephrem the Syrian
• Just as water is the only thing that can relieve thirst in the desert, the provision of God’s Word is the only thing that can satisfy our spiritual thirst. Jim George

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Water is life, just as God is

• Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
• Sometimes we seek spiritual nourishment; we long to drink from Peleg Elohim—the “God River.” At other times we feel buffeted by the waves of our life’s ups and downs, and seek reassurance, as in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “When you pass through the Waters, I am with you.” Water is life-giving, essential, and powerful; sometimes beautiful and sometimes scary. Just like life. Just like God. Toba Spitzer

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God is a spring…

• Like a spring of pure water, God’s peace in our hearts brings cleansing and refreshment to our minds and bodies. Billy Graham
• I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods. Georg Trakl

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…the source of all life

• God is the source of life and light and joy to the universe. Like rays of light from the sun, like the streams of living water bursting from a living spring, blessings flow out from Him to all His creatures. And wherever the life of God is in the hearts of men, it will flow out to others in love and blessing. Ellen G. White
• We come from God. As the tree from the root and the stream from the spring; that’s why we should always be in contact with Him, as the trunk from the root. Because the stream dries up when it is separated from the spring and the tree dies when is uprooted. Pythagoras
• Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source. Lord Byron

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God is a stream

• God’s perennial stream of grace and mercy is ever available to those who are willing to walk to the stream and drink. Suren Naicker
• This force is unlimited. It is always moving and always flowing. The ancient Hawaiians, the Kahunas, used the metaphor of the flow of a running stream to represent the divine force. Wayne Dyer

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God is a river

• The love of God toward you is like the Amazon River flowing down to water a single daisy. B. Meyer

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God is a fountain

• Fountain of Love my source is in thee – Loving thy will my spirit is free – Beautiful day when all of us see – The hope of the world is Love! Peace Pilgrim
• God is a fountain flowing into itself. Pope Dionysius

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God is the ocean

• Very high, very grand, and very wise is the ocean of God, the Water of Life. Rumi
• God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God. Charles Spurgeon
• God as the ocean

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God is dew

• What is the scent of water?” “Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew. Elizabeth Goudge
• When the bee has gathered the dew of heaven and the earth’s sweetest nectar from the flowers, it turns it into honey, then hastens to its hive. In the same way, the priest, having taken from the altar the Son of God (who is as the dew from heaven, and true son of Mary, flower of our humanity), gives him to you as delicious food. Saint Francis de Sales
• There is a dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens in cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them. Henry Ward Beecher

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God is a cloud

• God is a cloud from which rain fell. Dejan Stojanovic

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God is rain

• God descends to earth like fresh spring rain, and at every level his grace is received differently. For some it feels like love, for others like salvation. It feels like safety and warmth at one level, like coming home at another. Deepak Chopra
• The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. Kim Stanley Robinson
• God is with us to be utilised. His Power, His Love, His Thought, His Presence, must be at our disposal, like other great forces, such as sunshine and wind and rain. We can use them or not, as we please. Basil King
• The rain does not fall in a certain land only; the sun does not shine only on a particular country. All that comes from God is for all souls. Verily, blessing is for every soul; for every soul, whatever be one’s faith or belief, belongs to God. Hazrat Inayat Khan

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God is water and we are the tap

• God is the water, and you are the faucet. Marianne Williamson
• Nothing is wrong with the inlet: It is the outlet that is obstructed. The water of life does not spring forth because the flow has no way through. Were the outlet cleared, the water of life would flow unceasingly. What a child of God needs is not more life but more flow of life. Watchman Nee

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We are fish and God is the water in which we have our being

• I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. I laugh when I hear that people go on pilgrimage to find God. Kabir
• God is closer to us than water is to a fish. Catherine of Siena
• A fish cannot drown in water, A bird does not fall in air. In the fire of creation, God doesn’t vanish: The fire brightens. Each creature God made must live in its own true nature; How could I resist my nature, That lives for oneness with God? Mechthild of Magdeburg

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Religions are rivers leading to the same ocean (God)

• We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can’t love only some of his children. Muhammad Ali

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More thoughts

• I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water. Elizabeth Gilbert