The Most Popular Word In The Bible And The Lesson To Learn From It

One word is mentioned in the bible more than faith, hope, prayer, or worship. That word is water. 

Water is used throughout the bible as a metaphor to describe God’s love, creativity, wrath, cleansing, and liberation. 

In Exodus, God instructs Moses to part the Red Sea so the Israelites can flee from their oppressors. Here water becomes a protective symbol of God’s deliverance, transporting an oppressed people to a promised land. 

Being delivered to the “promised land” is a narrative our enslaved ancestors could relate to, but water as a source of spiritual liberation wasn’t a new concept for them. Before colonization and enslavement, numerous African diasporic spiritual practices used water and water deities

Since water is mentioned in the bible roughly 700 times, to appreciate water is to know God. 

In his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes draws a connection between Blackness and water, using water to map Black history from the beginning of time to the present. If we understand water as being divine, Hughes’ poem implies that we have always known God. 

To know water is to know God. God’s waters live within each of us, flowing through our efforts for liberation.