Well, if you’ve tuned in before to Kingdom Offerings, you know that One Hundred-Fold Ministries is all about the Gospel of the Kingdom.

I firmly believe that there are huge, great, untapped blessings, miracles that are set aside for us that we can know by setting our eyes on the central theme and the message of Jesus’ person, work, and teachings. That’s what’s called the Gospel of the Kingdom. I don’t know, have you had this strange sense that there is something missing, that there is something, I don’t know, there’s something just off in the world?

For many, I think that the answers are not so much hidden as undiscovered. So here at One Hundred-Fold Ministries, we try and discover those mysteries of the Kingdom together. We have said maybe that stories might be the best way to communicate the mystery and to pique the interest of those that are asking for help in understanding what this good news is, exactly.

So last week, we started a story called The Vase. Perhaps remember that the last time we recorded this, we were only able to get halfway through. So let me recap. The hero of our story is Enoch. And he is headed across the deserts of the Middle East with a very precious cargo. He has taken a vase that he just created to the market.

This vase is without a doubt the finest vase ever made anywhere, anytime. It is tall and thin and perfectly formed. He’d keep it for himself, but you see, Enoch is on a mission. His daughter, Elsa, is near death. She has a terrible fever, and he is hoping to sell the vase for enough money to buy medicine. Problem is, though, that the market is several days away.

As a potter, Enoch must live close to where the best clay deposits exist. This only makes sense, but that means that Enoch and his wife Marta and his little daughter, Elsa, must live over a hundred miles from the closest market of any size. So Enoch is in a race against time. He has set out on foot, trying to run as far and fast as he can. He expects it to take two, probably three days of running, depending on the desert heat and how his strength holds out.

You see, it would normally take at least a week to make this trip. And as I teased last week, things are about to get desperate for Enoch very soon. Let’s get started with The Vase, Part Two.

Enoch forgot to take water. On a three-day trip into the desert heat and no water. Usually, Enoch would take days getting ready to take this trip. There was so much to think about – packing enough food, a blanket, a small lantern  that didn’t offer so much light that it would attract a robber, a large hat as a shade for the grueling heat of the desert. But Enoch was in such a hurry. Always before when he went, he took Boco, his donkey, and Boco carried the water. But he was alone for this fast-paced trip. In his rush and hope to save his family, he just didn’t think.

About twenty miles into the trip, he reached into his pack and nothing, just the vase. The insane truth came to him in a flash. He had left without water. How could he have been so stupid?

He stopped to think. “Think, Enoch, think”, he said to himself. He knew that by the end of the day tomorrow, he could make it to the Wadi al-Arad, an oasis in the desert. It was out of his way to the city, but it would be faster than going back home and starting over. He would just have to find the hidden mouth of the valley that led to that desert spring.

He doubled his pace. He started out southwest, and the heat of the day took its toll. He went forty miles on that first day, and by night, he was exhausted, but there was no time to rest. He knew that tomorrow he would have to do fifty miles to find that hidden oasis or risk dying of thirst.

If only he could be sure of the way. He used the stars at night to chart his path, but he just wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been to this wadi in years. He traveled as fast as he could in the darkness, and as the sun came up, Enoch was walking in his sleep. By ten in the morning, it was 112 degrees. If he was right, he still had fifteen miles to go, but in this heat and without water.

He began to panic. He pulled his backpack tight against his back and started to run. Well, you and I would only call it a fast walk, but it was as fast as he could go. The heat had stolen his strength, and it was stealing his hope as well. Nearing the end of the third day, according to his calculations, he had gone far enough to find the wadi. But there was no sign of even the valley that led to it.

It was growing dark, and the hope of finding water by morning was all but gone. He fell to the ground in the ebbing sun, his hands still burning when he touched the hard-baked earth. He began to cry. He wept for his daughter, for his wife. She wouldn’t know what even happened to him. His mind was full of doubt and shame. “How could I have been so stupid?” Enoch thought.

“I got so excited by this probably worthless vase. Who would want a vase that you can’t even use? It’s so fragile, it would probably break the first time it was touched. What a fool I am. I deserve to die here in the desert. They can keep this stupid vase when they find my body. That is, if they find my body.”

He could hardly whisper now. His mouth was so dry that his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. His lips were cracked and bleeding, his breathing shallow. He could barely keep his eyes open. He knew the signs. He was dying. He laid his head on the ground, laying the side of his head onto the back of his hand. He was hoping to die in his sleep, but he couldn’t sleep. Enoch thought his mind was playing tricks on him. He thought he heard music or singing.

He lifted his weary head off the back of his hand and the music stopped. Yes, he decided he was dying. It was the heat stroke, he guessed. Soon this day would be over, and he laid his head back down on the back of his hand. Weirdly, the music started up again. Enoch began to wake up a bit.

Remember, I said you had to be an artist and you had to have a good mind to be a potter. And even now in his despair, he started thinking. He sat up and looked around, but there was nothing but hard-baked earth for as far as you could see. Who could be singing? What made that music? Again, he bent over, and this time he put his ear right onto the ground. Yes, you know what? He could hear it.

Not quite music, but something, not a song, but a melody was playing in the dirt. He sat up and looked closer at the ground. There in the dirt was a small crack, not even the size of his little finger. He followed it with his eyes looking back over his shoulder. He could see that it worked its way across the earth.

Somehow, Enoch got to his feet, and in the darkness, he stumbled along the crack in the earth for a quarter mile or more. It was starting to widen a little bit. He could slip his thumb down into it now, but the earth was still baked hard as stone. Try as he might, he couldn’t break the crack any wider apart. Again, he put his ear to the crack. It was louder now, much louder. He thought he could feel the music in his bones. It was sweet, and it gave him hope somehow. But the miracle was about to unfold right before Enoch’s eyes.

Once more he groaned and stood and walked along the crack. Slowly it began to open up more. It was starting to grow lighter, and the voices in his head said, “Stop, you fool, you probably won’t even live through the night.” But the music. What was it? Finally, he came to an opening in the crack that you could call a hole in the earth.

He bent over and put his face to the earth, but this time peering into the hole. The strangest thing –  he could see light inside the hole. There was something glowing, or better put, shimmering down in the hole, maybe, I don’t know, eight feet down. It was moving. The sound was clearly coming from down there. It was the source of the song.

He could hardly breathe. Was it water? It sounded like water. Enoch knew he was about out of time. He sat up on his knees over the hole. Quickly, he took off his shirt and taking hold of a sleeve, he pushed the shirt into the hole. He put his arm all the way in as far as he could, dangling the shirt over what he hoped was this life-saving water.

He tried to lower the shirt further, but it just wasn’t long enough. He couldn’t tell – it felt like maybe the shirt was touching something deep under the surface, maybe like rushing water, but it could just be wishful thinking. He slowly pulled the shirt up through the hole, almost afraid of what he would find. If it was dry, all his hope would be gone. “Be praised!”, Enoch whispered at the top of his voice.

A half inch of his sleeve was damp. He brought it to his lips and sucked the moisture out of the cloth. It was sweet. It was fresh. Not a hint of minerals or salt. And strangest of all, it was cold, ice cold. Three more times, he lowered his shirt through the small hole into the singing water. But now that his shirt sleeve was wet, the sleeve barely held any of the water, just mere drops.

It was still clean, fresh, and cold, but this was too slow. Mere drops. He could tell now that the excitement had worn off, he was still dying. His strength was gone. And then, of course, he thought of what you have already thought of – the vase! He crawled to where he left his pack, struggled to untie the leather strap that held the top of the pack together. And finally, it opened.

He took out the vase, this perfect, slender, paper-thin vase. And pulling the strap from his pack, Enoch tied it around the neck of that vase. His mind was calculating. Would it be long enough? He thought maybe so. He struggled to find the strength to crawl back to that little hole, but somehow he made it. Hope gave him strength.

He was about to lower it into the hole, and then he thought he’d better tie the other end around his wrist. He wasn’t sure that his grip was strong enough anymore. And that slowed Enoch down enough to have him think about one last, dangerous problem. What if the current was too strong? What if the water was running so fast that it would take hold of the vase and slam it into the side of the channel below?

Paper thin as it is, it wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand that kind of blow. Enoch was frozen with fear. He would die soon without water. But if the vase was destroyed, his daughter would die. Finally, Enoch realized that really there was no decision to make. In either case, everything depended on bringing enough of the shimmering, singing water to the surface to keep him alive so he could sell the vase.

He couldn’t mouth the words. His lips were too dry, but he prayed his simple prayer again to himself, “Please, God. God, please.” The vase just fit into the hole. He slowly let it down by the leather strap. He felt it bob on the surface of the water. He felt the current of the underground stream grab it, pull at it.

Then he felt it give way to the water and start to sink beneath the surface of the stream. The leather tie held. He could tell the vase was full and Enoch began to cry,  this time in crazy joy. As he began to pull the vase to the surface,  Enoch had the biggest miracle of all.

As he pulled the vase ever so slowly, the glow began to build. The water was giving off light, as though it were on fire. The melody was rising to the surface as well. This water was alive. The higher Enoch drew the vase under the surface, the brighter the dark water was filled with light. It wasn’t until the vase was pulled all the way out, safely in his hands and filled with this sparkling, life-giving water that he could see the final miracle.

You see, the vase had been transformed. You won’t believe it, but that’s okay. Enoch was holding the vase in his own hands, and he couldn’t believe his eyes either. The vase was completely made new. The vase was now filled with this curious living water, and something in that water had completely changed the vase.

It was the same vase he had crafted just days ago, but in reality, it was completely different, the same size, the same shape, the same paper-thin sides, but it was so different. It was spectacularly glazed, inlaid with pure gold strands that separated the most vibrant of colors. Red, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, brilliant and glowing in the darkness of the night.

But that description doesn’t quite describe it. The colors were more like rose and azure, vermilion, and canary, periwinkle, or garnet. Along the mouth of the vase was a lip of pure jade. The vase was reinforced with bronze. Embedded into the vase were two large gems, one of Sardis and the other of Jasper. Both gems polished and cut perfect in every way.

This vase, this plain, simple, amazing vase, was now beautiful beyond description. Perfectly useful, even for everyday purposes, it was now stronger than pounded iron. But yet even now, filled to the rim with this shimmering water, it was lighter than when Enoch first lowered it down the hole. It was the same vase and yet completely changed.

Completely new in every way except for the fact that it was still a vase, his vase. Enoch raised the vase to his lips and unafraid he drank deep and long of the life-giving water. He emptied that vase in a single drink. He felt strengths coming back into his body. He could feel his lips healing. He knew he was no longer dying. In fact, he felt that finally, for the first time in his life, he was truly living.

He sat for the longest time reflecting on the water he had just drank. He was no longer thirsty, but he still wanted more. Picked up the vase to lower it once again into the hole above this stream of living water, and strangely, he found it to be still full. In fact, it was running a bit over the mouth of the vase. He said it out loud, though no one was there to hear him.

“This is impossible. How can this be?” He looked to the sky above and Enoch could see thousands of stars above his head, like he had never seen them before. Speaking to the sky, Enoch said, “Who am I? That you should give me this gift?” He knew at once he was not to sell the vase.

The water would save his daughter, and he was sure that he would get home in time. He carefully stopped up the vase, filled with this singing living water with a small rag, and he slipped the vase back into his pack. Standing with renewed strength, he felt he could walk and not grow weary. As Enoch paused one last time, he looked to the heavens. “Are you sure you want to give me this gift? I have not earned this. Are you sure?” Enoch’s heart heard the reply as sure as if the voice had spoken. The reply was smiling in tone.

That’s the end of The Vase.

And in our next podcast, we’ll unpack some of the critical Kingdom principles that are found in this story.

You can also find a transcript of the story and podcast The Vase (Part One and Two). And maybe you can find some of those Kingdom principles for yourself. See what you can find and then send me an email at dave@100foldministries.org.

And peace, my friend. There is living water set aside for you.