This is what it comes down to: all the water stuff in Scripture never meant all that much to me. Gather by the waters? I've never really done that.
Resting by streams? Maybe once on a hiking trip?
I offer you living water, and you will never thirst again?
It's never meant much because frankly, I've never really BEEN thirsty.
Resting by streams? Maybe once on a hiking trip?
I offer you living water, and you will never thirst again?
It's never meant much because frankly, I've never really BEEN thirsty.
When I get thirsty, well, I get a drink. Out of the fridge. With ice.
I unwisely took one 16 oz. bottle of water on my trip. I left it in the car, went to the three hour church service in the tent, hiked across the mountain top to visit several families, hiked down to the community watering hole, checked out a piece of property and a few gardens, and then we returned to the car. Almost 6 hours later.
During the church service, yeah, I was thirsty. Visiting families afterwards, I started to have a headache. But oh, they were beautiful. Quickly made me forget.
The wrinkled old mama, don't even know who all's mama she was, but that she was many, and loved, and loved by many.
The plump new mother with the silver tooth, couldn't stop grinning over her seven day old baby, even though it was her fifth, even though she hadn't hoped for it, even though she wasn't sure what the future's going to look like.
The brothers playing soccer with the soccer ball they made from and old t-shirt and scraps of cloth, barely stopped to grin, playing so hard.
All happy to have me on their porches, in their homes, in their lives for the day.
Hiking through the dust and radiating sun to the "water spot", taking off my shoes and climbing down the side of the rocky cliff to get to the drip, I started to feel lightheaded and I could feel the fluid thickening in my ears.
It was hard to take the drip seriously. This couldn't be IT. But it was just as I had been told, but much harder than I had imagined to get to.
The drip, today, was a trickle--coming from a broken white pipe somehow lodged in the side of the cliff, with a sole green leaf guiding it's flow. A small puddle of water was welling out of the ground, and it was obvious that someone had tried, once, to turn this natural spring of water into something that could be used. Not all that successfully.
They say during the rainy season it is an actual stream of water. During the dry season--now--it fluctuates between the trickle I was seeing and a drip...drip....drip.
A line of children and young women waited, the first young woman perched over her silver bowl, changing it out quickly when it was almost full, dumping it into a five gallon bucket, and waiting again.
The line, everyone says, never ends. Everyone has their time, which doesn't change when the water comes slower. In the rainy season, your family might get a bucket of water a day in your 15-20 minute space. In the dry season, your family might have a bowl.
It took all the gripping, strength and balance I had to climb out of the ravine, my head pounding with dehydration, and one of the associate pastors looked at my feet and plunged back into the ravine, demanding a bowl of water from the girl at the spout, and emerged with it again, balancing it ever so carefully.
"Here," he said, "Wash your feet."
"Are you NUTS?" I said without thinking, thankfully in English. Switching to Creole, I apologized.
"I'm sorry. Thank you, brother. But no thank you. There is NO WAY after seeing that that I am using one drop of that water on my stinking feet. But thank you. They will survive."
As I continued back down the path, I saw him carefully, as if carrying a bowl of liquid gold, descend into the pit again, pouring every drop back into the thankful girl's bucket.
So much, after seeing that ravine, THAT water source, was explained. From the church mountain top, I could see dozens of homes, hundreds of people. Some animals. A lot of dry crops.
And it IS. It is laundry, which, for months at a time, is just not done. It is cooking. It is food. It is washing hands, which again, for months at a time, is just not done. It's bathing. It's necessary for the crops. For the animals. For your children.
It's necessary to DRINK, for heavens sakes.
By the time I was being guided through the fields, picking cotton and digging out manioc root, water had become all I could think about.
I was so thirsty that I was dizzy and sick. My mind was glued to that water bottle in the car. My hands were filthy, my arms and face and teeth covered in thick dust, the sun burning my skin. As I spoke to new friends with my sluggish brain, it was all I could really think about. Water. I needed it. I wanted it. I would have paid dearly for it. I couldn’t even think about anything else. I was ready to head back to the pit and beg a three minute space from the drip, not worrying about whatever microbes were in there.
To finish our day together, several families had scraped together a generous meal…rice, beets, a few carrots. But I only wanted one thing, the hot food choking me as I swallowed it down my dry throat.
I just wanted some WATER, and WATER was exactly what they didn’t have.
There was a stack of plates, but no cups. A perfectly arranged pile of vibrant beets, but no water.
It was simple: there WAS none. Ten of us had come to visit. The family feeding us had 12 people. 20 minutes at the spout.
Today, the water had been used to cook for us. Nobody even had the luxury of drinking it.
And it was then that the 641 "water"s and the 55 "thirst" and the 40 "streams" of the Bible hit me.
"The afflicted and needy are seeking water (my hand is UP!), but there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst. I, the Lord, will answer them Myself." Isaiah 41:16
"I will pour out water on the thirsty land (yes, please!) and streams on the dry dusty ground. I will pour out My Spirit." Isaiah 44:2-4
Suddenly, that intimate talk at the well means so much more..."Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up eternal life." John 4:13-14. Get me some of THAT!
As my mind was glued to that hot water bottle in the car, my lips cracking, my mouth desperate for it...there He is. Living water. When we're desperate for Him, when we're THIRSTY, He is to be found, and abundant, and deep. Living water, that we might thirst no more. The Source that never runs dry. The Abundance that heals our pains and washes away our dust and satisfies our souls.
Water IS life, and it is Living Water that Bois d'Homme Bas and I need.
I don't know how they do it. Seriously. And I don't know why they choose, if it is a choice, to live in a place that has no water.
They can, and have, build homes with NO money, NO "city stuff" like cement or block, just with what they have. And they can, and have, plant and till and labor to feed their families and to make some ends meet.
But you can't MAKE water. Can't MAKE springs of water pop up in a dry and weary land. And yet there, in that ravine, IS a miracle. There is fresh water there, and it is almost as if the people just don't really know HOW, or don't have the tools, to REALLY tap into it.
As my mind is baffled and my heart broken over it, I think of the many, many many, around the world, who continue to choose to live in the desert...to scrape by without Living Water, to wait 24 hours a day for a drip when an abundant fountain of Life is calling. The many who ALL have Him available, but just don't know how to tap in. Or can't. Or won't.
My mind baffled, my heart broken, when I think of so many who KNOW about that source and are tapped into it, drinking freely of the Water that never runs dry, but never TELL anyone else about it.
My mind baffled, my heart broken, when I think about how many in Bois d'Homme Bas, in Haiti, in the world who HAVE heard, and yet continue to live in the desert without Him, because thirst is what they know. Because their parents were thirsty before them.
I have seen and experienced with the Low People, in a new way, what it IS to be THIRSTY.
I am ETERNALLY grateful that EBS decided to do a conference, that Phil willingly came and spoke, that Ernst make the long journey to be watered, that Vilmer quite amazingly agreed to help Ernst bring Water to the desert, that Vilmer invited me to come, and that in one day, I got to be THIRSTY.
Got to see and be a part of the free sharing of The Life Source in the desert.
I pray He'll let me be a part of that forever, in any desert, in EVERY desert.
With four sinks in my house, and a Wellspring in my heart, I've got a lot to think about.
***Out of the Dust / They Spring Forth / by Streams of Living Water just wouldn't be complete without my insane journey home and ponderings of my heart, since. Will wrap all that up next time, and as always, love hearing from you!
WOW thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you for giving us a glimpse to what it is like for The Low People to be thirsty. That we may understand a little bit more what God's Word is saying.
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