Re-digging Ancient wells
What the Lord needs from this generation.
Ever had those seasons when your inner landscape feels arid?
I was chatting to a Creative friend who I love and respect the other week and he said he just feels creatively parched. We shared about those times when your head is crowded, yet your heart feels somehow empty. And I’m sure it’s not just him right?
We all long for clarity, but sometimes everything feels blurred at the edges. Creativity becomes more duty than delight. Worship feels like words sung into the wind. If you’ve been there, you know how disorienting it can be. Today, this for you.
Scripture tells us of another time when things ran dry.
In Genesis 26, Isaac walked the land of his father Abraham and found that the Philistines had filled the old wells with dirt. Enemies had polluted the ancient wells.
These were not symbolic wells, but the lifeblood of survival, sources of fresh water, hidden deep beneath the ground. Without them, there could be no thriving. And so, Isaac knelt in the dust, shovel in hand, and began the work of re-digging.
He cleared the debris, stone by stone, until water broke through again. And the wells his father had once used to bring life did their job all over again in another generation.
There’s something in this story for us.
Every generation must clear its own wells. We inherit faith, stories, songs, but they often lay blocked by neglect, distraction, or opposition. If we want to drink deeply, if we want to tell God’s story again in our own time and in our own culture, we must all tackle the task of re-digging.
Each one of us has to clear away the rubble, to let living water rise fresh for our time.
So get out your shovel!!!
I have a hunch that for us creatives there are a few wells which could be beneficial to open up again. Three to be exact. And what wells are they. Well (pun intended) I think they are:
Wells of Waiting
Waiting is not passive. It is the quiet discipline of trust. To wait on the Lord is to stand still in a culture that’s relentlessly restless. To remain attentive in silence, lets longing develop into prayer.
Isaiah assures us: “Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). The Psalms echo: “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).
In the waiting, we learn to go deeper.
My friend Strahan Cohen talks about the presence of God being like a still pond, deep clear and breathtakingly beautiful. That it’s a place of clarity, but in our busyness in life we throw in stones of all sorts of things; social media, Netflix, works, time with friends, ministry, or whatever.
As we do that it’s like throwing rocks into the pool stirring up the debris and dirt and muddying the waters. Sometimes we have to slow down and stop all the frenetic energy in order to get quiet enough to let the pool settle again. To unclog our wells from noise, from hurry, from the need to produce.
Stillness is not wasted time; it is holy ground where clarity returns.
Wells of Wonder
Wonder is the posture that keeps worship alive.
The Psalmist declares: “You are the God who performs wonders; you display your power among the peoples” (Psalm 77:14). Yet wonder is not only about what God has done. It’s also the holy question: I wonder what He might do next?
For the creative soul, wonder is oxygen. It makes us dream again, sketch again, sing again. It keeps us from settling into cynicism or even predictability. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the world does not lack wonders, it only lacks wonderers.
Re-digging this well means asking childlike questions again, leaning into God’s bigness, and allowing possibility to interrupt our assumptions. Allow yourself to ask again today “I wonder what God could do with my surrender, my art, my song or my worship”.
Wells of Worship
Worship is the well we return to again and again, not because God needs it, but because we do. John Ortberg reminds us, “I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on.”
Worship clears away the sediment of self-preoccupation.
Eugene Peterson described worship as the way we “interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God.” It’s not about performance, not about perfection, but about affection. It’s pouring out love before the One who first loved us.
When we sing, pray, or create as acts of worship, the water runs clear again.
Re-digging the wells is not glamorous work.
It’s gritty, slow, sometimes lonely. But it’s how living water flows in every generation. We are a people of worship. If we want purity in our songs, depth in our prayers, authenticity in our creativity, we must be willing to pick up the shovel and do the unblocking.
So let us re-dig the wells of waiting, of wonder, of worship. Let us find the ancient paths, not to repeat the past but to tell God’s story anew, in our own tongue, for our own time, with clarity and living water.
Grace and peace,
Cass
Share this encouragement with a friend who feels stagnant, spiritually, or creatively dry.
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