The Watershed

Sometimes on holidays we find ourselves in interesting places by accident. Last year we were in Austria and took a bit of a detour just to avoid a tunnel—not much scenery to be seen in a 13km tunnel! At the summit of a mountain pass we noticed, off to the side of the road, a large rock with water spurting from it. We pulled in to enjoy the scenery and to have a look.

Signage announced that it was the European Watershed—water going to the left ended up in the North Sea via the Rhine; water flowing right ended up in the Black Sea and then the Mediterranean, via the Danube. 

Think of it: two drops of water from the same source, ending up in two different oceans—one warm, the other chilly—with very different stories. They begin together and travel side by side for a time, but then came the watershed, and from that point on everything changes

I thought it something of a picture of life.

There is a watershed moment for all of us—something that transforms our journey and sets our destiny.

Sometimes it’s dramatic—a crisis or an accident that changes everything.

But often it doesn’t feel like standing on a mountain pass with a signpost and a clear dividing line. It comes quietly—a conversation, a growing realisation, a slow accumulation of unease about the direction we are heading.

At its heart, the watershed is about Jesus Christ. He’s the dividing point. What we do with him sets our direction. Will we bow the knee and follow him, or continue our own way?

From the outside, two lives may look almost identical for a time—same work, same routines, same relationships—but beneath the surface, the direction has been decisively altered. For a while, they may seem to run in parallel. But they do not end in the same place. The divergence is real, even if it is not immediately visible.

And this is what gives the idea of a watershed its urgency. We are not simply drifting in a neutral landscape. At every moment, we are being carried in one direction or another. There is no standing still. The habits we form, the voices we listen to, the desires we nurture—these are the small streams that, together, determine which side of the divide we are on.

And yet there is one crucial difference from the water on that mountain. A drop of water cannot turn back once it has crossed the divide. Its course is fixed—either the North Sea or the Mediterranean. Ours is not.

While we have breath, there remains the possibility of a new beginning. However long we have been travelling in the wrong direction, we can ask Christ to redirect us—to set us on a different course, toward a different end. Your course can still be changed.