Thirsty Dog

A dog, especially a dog with a heavy fur coat, knows when she’s thirsty. She can smell that drink a mile away and makes a bee-line to dip her feet in as well as her thirsty mouth.

The pure joy of it makes me smile. Makes me laugh.

Sometimes I am thirsty and I don’t even recognise it. My thinking short-circuits and my energy levels drop as dehydration steals my potential. 

All I need to do is come to the water and drink. Jesus invites us to approach him for that water that wells up to eternal life. Can’t you just smell the refreshing water?

Dragging

       

Everybody’s dragging. For those with school connections, it’s nearing the end and no doubt the echoes of ‘sprint!’ aren’t helping. Sometimes you’re just too tired to sprint. Even putting one foot in front of the other seems challenging.

And yet. We are about to open the doors of a local food bank to help provide meals for those in crisis, and we have been blessed with over forty volunteers to man it three times a week, and the food collection is phenomenal. So many people want to help. Despite their own fatigue. There’s just something awful about thinking there may be a family in a kitchen near you whose cupboards are bare.

Most of us like to do things to help others. It makes us feel affirmed and justifies our own existence in a way. 

But we are human beings, not human doings. We don’t need to justify ourselves, because Jesus has done that for us. Sometimes we just need to take time to sit and contemplate. To accept refreshment from our Lord, who gives the water of life that springs up inside of us then and provides restorative refreshment for others. 

If we don’t pause by the well occasionally, we miss that crucial breather. We may muster up the strength to keep going, but our spirits gradually dry out, dessicate, and we find we have nothing to refresh anyone else with, because we are dehydrated ourselves.

Seek the Lord. Call on him. There is peace like a river, and glorious life. And water in abundance so that you will never thirst again, as long as you continue to draw from Jesus.

Water Power

On a hot summer’s day, it is pure bliss to leap into the cool waters of a swimming pool or lake. Or to stand in a shower and let the refreshing drops drench from above. As it gently soaks us, the water strokes our skin gently, belying its power.

But walk along the beach and pick up a smooth stone, as we did at Stonehaven last week, and wonder,how many eons did it take for the pounding waves to reduce what was once rough and sharp to something so smooth? 

The power of water to smooth away our sharpness. I’m looking at a painting made by Fiona, which she painted as a sort of prayer picture. There is a small body of water at the top, flowing out from between two golden gates and down, down, gathering strength and power as it goes, widening into a life-giving torrent as it reaches the silhouettes of people standing with upraised arms.

Thirsty people, just waiting to receive the life giving waters from the gates of heaven itself. The refreshing waters of life promised by Jesus. Showers of mercy and grace. Coming to inundate those who wait on the Lord.

Thirsty people. Weary people. Know anybody like that?

Dry and Weary

Everyone needs a place. A place to rest and recover, to ponder and be refreshed. A layby along the way.

I have a prayer alcove. When my husband and sons were rebuilding our living room, with its very thick, old walls, one son suggested creating a prayer seat for me in one of the windows. 

It is my place of retreat. It is right in the living room, but when I sink onto that seat, I turn off from the jobs around me and slip into a more pensive and prayerful mood. One of my Bibles is there, and various notebooks and crosses and prayers. I’ve had a candle there sometimes, and just thought this morning I should keep my MP3 player there so that I can be refreshed sometimes with praise music.

Psalm 63 is one of my favourite pieces of Scripture.  It begins: ‘O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.’

In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

It hasn’t stopped pouring rain here for weeks, maybe months. Don texted me this morning that the roads were flooded.

I am not in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

But it reminds me of a line from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.’

The water flooding our roads and fields does not offer the refreshment I get when I sink onto my seat in my prayer alcove. 

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  John 7:37.

Jesus is the source of life-giving, refreshing water. When I drink from him, I am renewed, and I can splash out into soggy Scotland with a singing heart.

Where do you go when you are dry and weary?