Water

Click–Hum–Swish

Best sounds at the end of a full day: the dishwasher filled and set in motion.

But sometimes instead of emptying it right away the next morning to ready it for another load, I like to wash the few breakfast dishes by hand. Hot, soapy water cleaning the cups and spoons with equally hot water rinsing them to dry quickly brings a different kind of satisfaction and a few minutes of pause to think and pray.

Water. Wonderful water. I’ve always had a fascination with it. As a very young child, I lived in the parsonage that sat behind the church my dad pastored. The congregation was new. The building had only the basement completed. It had been roofed over to provide the space for church. But to me (4 or 5 years old), it had everything I needed: spigots around the outside at just my height. I think my first spankings came from playing in the water–or more likely from leaving the water running.

At age 6 we moved to a very rural, rustic campgrounds. What met my eye as we tumbled out of the car was a big green hand water pump right outside the main building. A little water-girl’s dream!

Around age 10 I sat around the dinner table with my family and friends. As we finished eating, I thought to myself: We eat three times a day. That means dirty dishes at each of those meals. So why not get to washing them right away when we’re done? That set in a pattern for my life. I’m grateful both for dishwashers and a sinks full of cleansing suds.

Life moved on, and marriage after college brought babies in quick succession. For the early ones, much water was needed for those cloth diapers. Cleaning them meant many rinses in the scrub sink before they went into the clothes washer. At one point in our lives we had a washing machine which heated the water. The diapers for those babies were almost boiled clean!

Ah, yes. Dishes and laundry: best earthly evidence of eternity!

I like the sight and sound and feel of clean. Maybe that’s why the Lord’s living water imagery resonates with me so well. From Isaiah’s Come everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters … to Jesus’ loving conversation with the woman from Samaria, water means life. Remember His words to her?

Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again–ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life.

In contrast, cracked cisterns don’t keep water in them, and they end in lifeless living. The Lord declares through prophet Jeremiah that His people have committed a double evil: they have abandoned Me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns that cannot hold water.

What kind of abandonment of God tempts my soul when thirsty? Doubt, fear, worry over sad circumstances I can’t change?

What broken replacement cisterns do I “dig”? Screen time, idleness, or a flurry of “service for the Lord” that may not be Holy Spirit directed?

King Jesus offers His living water now and in the future. In fact, one of the promises in Zechariah says I will release your prisoners from the waterless cisterns.

Have you found Him? The Living Water of salvation? If not, come to Him today. Then in daily life as we wash dirty dishes clean or fold fresh laundry, let’s think deeply about our own need of internal washing and get into the Word of God for daily cleansing.

Water. It runs through scripture from God separating it at Creation for human benefit in Genesis to the last invitation of spiritual life in Revelation.

And the one who is thirsty should come. Whoever desires should take the living water as a gift.

Wonderful water: for life now and for life forever.