Faith Aqueduct – Exploring the intersection of a man made system with the wisdom of God

As I pondered on how to get started writing this post, I needed to find out exactly what an aqueduct actually was. I had a vague definition and from my education, I knew “aqua” was a Latin word for water and I supposed duct had to do with its flow, but I did not know exactly what it meant. So a little Google search provided the following information. Now just as a note, I went to the kid site so that my jumbled mind could get a simple but direct understanding.

 As Rome expanded and the empire grew it became hard for the people who lived in the towns to get drinking and washing water. Because raw sewage was draining into the rivers, people who drank river water often got very sick or died. Roman government decided to build long stone channels to carry clean water from nearby hills to the towns. These were called aqueducts and were quite a challenge to build. The engineering had to be just right in order to get the water to run through the channels and get to the city without stagnating in the channel or coming too fast into the city. They had to keep the slope the same all the time, so sometimes the aqueducts had to run on high arches, and other times along the ground in stone channels, or even under the ground in tunnels. (http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/architecture/aqueducts.htm)

Thus, an aqueduct is a channel, and a channel is defined as a frequency transmission, it is a means of communication; course or means of communication or expression. A channel is a mode of expression – taking one thing to another, as with the aqueduct taking clean water to the people of Ancient Rome. Now faith is the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen Hebrews 11:1. Faith is also a channel; it is a means of expressing how we feel about the providence of God. Our manifestation of faith communicates our trust in God always providing our needs; our confidence that He gives us everything that is good and if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and unbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed James 1:5-6. Faith moves us beyond ourselves to come to trust in God. Faith drives us to action; we become the means (channel) by which others learn of the Lord. We carry (channel) the truth to the sick and dying who constantly drink of the raw sewage of sin! Just as it was a challenge for the Ancient Romans to build the aqueducts, it is a challenge for us to separate ourselves from stagnating in the world. We must keep the slope of our minds the same all of the time, so sometimes we have run to higher ground and take shelter because we are weak, sinful creatures and need to get our stones realigned. Always, we have to keep up our structure’s maintenance having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone Ephesians 2:20. And just as the building of the aqueduct brought longevity to the physical body by temporarily halting sickness and death; the building of our faith brings eternal life to the spiritual body by permanently ending death.