We Need Real Water

Rain is falling.  I hear it from every room of the house.

It surrounds me and doesn’t let go.  I find myself leaning into the softness, into the steadiness.
The rain wraps it’s arms around this house and around those that are in it. It is inescapable.

I remember when I couldn’t feel, when I couldn’t breathe when I couldn’t move….all I wanted was to feel the rain.  It’s something that I take for granted now…the ability to feel.  I can walk out my front door right now and stand under heaven’s showers and get lost in it’s steadiness.  If I wanted to, I could.

But back then, I couldn’t feel it.  I remember begging God to let me feel rain again….please God, one day!  I would dream about tilting my head to the sky and letting the wet, life giving liquid run deep in me.

But when our flesh is riddled with depression, trapped by anxiety, when we are hope-less and lost, we aren’t left with nothing.  We have the rain, the real rain.

The living water, the nourishment our soul needs…the Word we crave.

I have a dear friend who is drowning in a pit of depression and anxiety.  And when we are full of those things, those kill joys, we don’t have the capacity to think straight. And when we don’t think straight, we look for help in all the wrong places.  I know, I have been there. 

But we have the rain.  She has the water.  If only she would open it.

You see, the living water is different from that which falls from the sky.  The living water is like King’s scepter extended toward us.  It’s grace, it’s mercy, it’s hope, it’s clarity, it’s everything.  But we have to reach out for it, we have to want it.

We have to open it, we have to read it, we have to want it.  Why don’t we do that?  Why doesn’t she do that?  Why don’t I do that? 

When our lips become parched from the heat…., we don’t read a book about drinking water, we don’t watch a tv show about drinking water, we don’t ponder drinking water….we drink water.  We drink the real water.  Nothing else would satisfy.

So like a King extending his scepter, God extends his water to us.  It flows freely but we have to open it, we have to read it, we have to hide it in our hearts.  We have to go to the real water.

Depression, anxiety, fear, hopelessness…they are all kill joys.  They rob us of time, of moments, of relationships, of dreams and of our life.

It’s not fair.  It’s not fair my friend is struggling, it’s not fair her family is suffering, it’s not fair that I lost a whole year with my daughter.  It will never be fair.

But we can choose life, we can choose the living water.  We can choose to let his word right our minds and help us to see things as they are and not from the way our circumstance feels.

The rain, it’s died down now.  I can hear just a faint trickle from the water running off the roof onto the porch.  I pray for my friend, that the depression will die down, that it will be but a faint memory.  I have been witness to that very miracle in my life, it can happen, it will happen.

The real rain, it doesn’t ever stop.  But we need to open the Word to feel it on our faces.  We need to hide the word in our hearts so that it’s healing power can run deep into us.

I can’t make my friend drink the real water.  I can beg, I can suggest but in the end I am powerless.  The power comes from the water.

Drink friend, drink.  It will fill you, it will surround you and it will never stop.