God's Aquifer

Wednesday 12/11/19 4:47 AM

Jaci and I spent last weekend in Pacific Grove where I attended a math conference. We drove to the conference and the final miles took us through the beautiful Salinas Valley. We stopped at a rest stop where I read some of the history of the valley. Many years ago the river had water in it year-round, providing habitat for steelhead trout, salmon, beavers, and birds. During the rainy season the river would overflow its banks so that in places it was about a mile wide. This periodic flooding makes it a perfect valley for agriculture. Within the last hundred years or so increased water usage for irrigation purposes results in the river drying up during the dry season, obviously adversely affecting the salmon and steelhead trout populations since their spawning grounds can no longer be reached. There are large underground aquifers that are being tapped to irrigate the crops that are still grown in the valley. The signage at the rest area called the aquifers an underground river. It still contains a lot of water but it can’t be seen at the surface.

My devotional reading today is about hope and included Psalm 33:7, “(The Lord) gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses.” My first thought was of the underground aquifers in the Salinas Valley. At the surface things seem dry and barren but under the surface lies a huge reservoir of water that can be tapped to create life on the surface.

The past few years my life with God has been dry and barren. The circumstances of my life provided little hope for me and I felt as if my life was wasting away. Things seemed hopeless when looking around me but beneath the surface the reservoir of God’s love was waiting to be tapped. I need to be reminded that my circumstances are a poor resource for hope and joy but God’s lavish love and mercy can be tapped ignoring the surface conditions and drilling deeper.

Physical Therapy

Friday 12/6/19 6:27 AM

Yesterday I had a physical therapy appointment for my recovery from hip surgery. They gave me three new exercises to add to my list. All the new exercises, which include planks, are designed to strengthen my core. A strong core is essential for good body mechanics and takes some of the stress off one’s hips and back. The exercises I am doing now are preparing me for a good future.

My devotional theme for the week is preparing the way. Today’s readings included the ministry of John the Baptist and his explanation to the Pharisees about how he wasn’t the Messiah but was preparing the way for the Messiah. In a way he was like my physical therapist. He called the people to repentance, providing the means by which they could respond positively to the call of Jesus.

How best can I prepare the way for Jesus so, when others are around me, they will be enabled to respond positively to his call? In his book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen suggests the best thing I can do is to become a man of prayer. “For a man of prayer is, in the final analysis, the man who is able to recognize in others the face of the Messiah and make visible what was hidden, make touchable what was unreachable. The man of prayer is a leader precisely because through his articulation of God’s work within himself he can lead others out of confusion to clarification; through his compassion he can guide them out of the closed circuits of their in-groups to the wide world of humanity; and through his critical contemplation he can convert their convulsive destructiveness into creative work for the new world to come.”

If I am to be a good “physical therapist” pointing the way to Christ I must not neglect my own time spent with God. I need a strong core so that my walk in the world will be effective in pointing others to Jesus and lead them to a good future.