A hot day.
The tar bubbles up in the pavement.
The children run out side, role out a long yellow strip of plastic on the ground, attach it to the garden hose, open up the valve and water sprays out everywhere. They spend the afternoon sliding back and forth on the slip and slide, beating themselves black and blue across the hard ground as the yard turns to a muddy swamp. The heat washed away by playing in the water.
Water.
It can destroy whole cities, whole coast lines.
And without it, whole civilizations collapse, whole ecosystems go extinct.
We live in a time of changing rain fall patterns, we are at the beginning of massive population shifts that will have to follow the water.
We all look nervously down stream at Atlanta, a devouring lion prowling for a good deep drink.
History will soon be ruled not by oil but by water.
The only thing worse than drowning is dieing of thirst.
Water.
The universe is a dry place, very little water has been found out there, but we are a planet literally swimming in it, lately it just seems to be in the wrong place.
Our faith comes from an arid land, a dry place.
The holy stories of our forbears are filled with water, the struggle to live in thirst, or escape through it.
The flooding of the world and all that is left is a little ark of life, the parting of the sea, the calming of the storm, striking the rock, turning water into wine, water and blood coming out of his pierced side, the baptism in the Jordon and the sky opens wide, the woman at the well, living waters, the waters of life, giving a cup of water to one who thirsts.
We are all like dirt farmers praying for rain, but not too much.
But rain doesn’t work like that, water doesn’t go where we tell it, it is a force of nature, wild, we might think we’ve tamed it like some circus animal until it bites us.
We too often treat the Grace of God like we treat water, we want the water on our own terms, just enough, not too much, like the timer on a sprinkler system so the lawn is watered when it won’t interfere with other activities and it turns off before the newspaper arrives. If only Grace was convenient.
Living with Grace is hard.
Living with the gift from out of the blue is hard.
We want grace to be earned, or deserved, or doled out in appropriate well balanced amounts, but what we get is a flood that can only carry us away.
We can no more domesticate or tame the grace God than we can tame a hurricane, we can play in the water, we can catch a wave, but no corps of engineers will ever make this water manageable.
Perhaps children with a garden hose have the right idea.
The people of Israel thirsted, and wanted water in the wilderness, the rock was tapped and they had water to drink, God provided, but God provided even more than water, God wanted more than survival, God wanted them free.
They were ready to go back to Egypt, back to slavery, in exchange for water and a regular meal. But God would not let them go back.
The woman at the well.
A stranger asked her for help, for water.
But what happened was that she met God, and her life was all about something else after that.
Perhaps our perpetual thirst is for more than water, our thirst is for some one, the one who is both water in a dry land and a flood of judgment over our self centered thirst.
Grace is like that, if we hold on to it rather than sharing it, we are judged, flooded, washed away until we see that the water we have is the water we are given to share, that all may be freed from slavery.
The wounds of Christ, the awesome source of the flood of life, he is the rock struck in the wilderness bringing water to a withered creation.
And it isn’t just enough life to keep things tidy, it is too much, rearranging our lives, starting things over, until we wash up on the land where all is grace, and with thankful hearts we become a gracious people.
Water.
The God who is water in our dessert, the God who is the stranger asking for a drink.
Jesus is where our thirst for God and God’s thirst for us meet one another and kiss.
What do we do when God says, “Give me a drink?”
Perhaps the best thing to do is turn on the garden hose and play in the water