I would have changed my route just to avoid the unpleasant smell, but I wasn’t familiar with the area so I had to stay on the path. Eventually I came to the source of the odor: a stagnant, swampy pool of water apparently left standing after a heavy rain.

I stood looking at that miserable blight in the beauty of the woods: murky, tepid water with slimy-looking weeds and rotted debris under the surface; insects hovering over the dingy quagmire; parched and peeling earth where there used to be some sort of moisture, and then a rank slough bordering the putrid water; and all the while the stench, foul and heavy.

Then the thought surfaced . . .
. . . men who are stagnant in spirit . . .
Zephaniah 1:12

STAGNANT:

not moving or flowing
foul from standing still
sluggish, dull
Lord, how tragic!

To be so offensive and unlovely and treacherous. Stagnant.

To be dull and filled with trash. Stagnant. When I could be clear and filled with Your presence.

To be so foul that people would actually take a different path rather than rub shoulders with me. Stagnant.

To actually be such a blight that someone might lose their sense of direction and become lost because of seeing and smelling and touching me! Stagnant.

Lord, please don’t ever let me be that way. I know there might have to be some radical cleansing involved to purify my pond, perhaps painful and deep. But rather suffer than be stagnant . . .

repulsive, filthy, sickening, putrid, dead.

Stagnant in my spirit.

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