"Channels"

 

“Channels”

 

One of the many waterways in and around New York City is the East River. It runs 16 miles from Long Island Sound to New York Bay between Manhattan and Queens. But it’s misnamed—it’s actually a channel, not a river. A river has a source from a higher elevation and flows by gravity into a bigger body of water while a channel connects two larger bodies. The English Channel between England and France is probably the most familiar to us. It’s about 350 miles long and 21 to 150 miles wide, flows from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and is the world’s busiest shipping area. And as a Metropolitan New York native I’m familiar with the Ambrose Channel, the main water artery of the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Channels are natural but human ingenuity has constructed waterways which have made shipping more efficient and far less expensive: canals. In 1825 the Erie Canal in New York was opened connecting the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and is credited with making America’s westward expansion more feasible. In 1869 the Suez Canal between the Red and Mediterranean Seas was completed, cutting 5500 miles from the journey around Cape Agulhas, Africa’s southernmost point. With the building of the Panama Canal in 1914, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the voyage from New York to San Francisco was reduced by 8000 miles. History would have been much different without these water routes and the trade they made possible,

Around 1900 the hymn “Channels Only” appeared. The circumstances of its composition are uncertain (including who actually wrote it) but it describes God’s people as channels through whom the message of Christ flows to those who need to hear it. The first two verses and chorus tell us how God equips us for this task:

“How I praise Thee, precious Savior, That Thy love laid hold of me;

Thou has saved and cleansed and filled me That I might Thy channel be.

Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me, A clean vessel in Thy hand;

With no power but as Thou givest Graciously with each command.

Channels only, blessed Master, But with all Thy wondrous power

Flowing through us, Thou canst use us Every day and every hour.”

To be God’s channel I must “…be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18); “…be a vessel for honor, sanctified (i.e. set apart) and useful for the Master….” (2 Timothy 2:21, NKJV) and “…give (myself) to God…When (I) think of what he has done for (me), is this too much to ask?” (Romans 12:1, NLT). Will I let anything “dam up” the channel of His truth flowing through me to a needy world?

 

Grace and Blessings!

Jim McMillan