
Plus, did I mention that it was hot? Blistering hot. Fry eggs on the pavement hot. And I don’t handle heat well. My internal thermometer is best kept below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything higher than that and I boil. So I had hunkered down inside and enjoyed the central air that I had installed a few months back.
The next day I stood in front of the barrel that held my cucumbers whose vines had majestically covered my garden’s back fence just the day before. The vines whose dark-green leaves hid the beautiful salad cucumbers that I proudly cut and sent home with my daughter and her husband, adding the comment, “There will be plenty more for Grandma and me. Enjoy!”
Now those same lush vines looked like they had been flame-broiled in the heat of Death Valley. Wilted. Brown. And the little baby cukes? How could they have turned yellow overnight?
Yet I watered, and as I refilled the reservoir in my self-wicking barrel, I prayed: “Lord, you can bring life back to these plants, if you so desire. Would you please?”
The picture you see was taken the day after I watered. My cucumbers revived. They just desperately needed water.
Just like we do! At least 8 glasses of water each day, especially when it’s blistering hot outside. And more than that. You and I need the Water that keeps us from withering under the blistering heat of life in a sin-broken world! Heat, sometimes caused by our own sins. (See David’s confession about guilt-wilting recorded in Psalm 32:3-7) At other times, we wilt in the withering furnace of affliction. (See Isaiah 48:10, James 1:9-11, etc.) Pressure, pain, sickness, sorrow, frustration, loss, loneliness, anxiety, persecution, death. Blistering heat our gracious Lord uses to draw us back to him. Because he alone refreshes us. As the Water once said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! As the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me.” (John 7:38-39, See also Isaiah 44:1-4)
Drink, my friend. Drink deep. Drink often, and be revived.
Privileged to serve,
Rev. Glenn Schwanke