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.