Clear as Rain

As I headed to my meeting a message came through from my dear friend, Darla, just checking in on me. I was grateful to hear from her. As we texted back and forth (no chiding, I used talk to text) her words made me smile, laugh a little, and started me thinking.

“Praying…He will make [the direction] clear as rainwater for you to see!”

Clear as rainwater, the purest there can be as it falls from heaven to earth. Then it comes through the pollutants in the air and settles on the ground, puddles on the heavy tarp, passes through the creases of leaves and the folds of blooms, and fills unattended watering cans and buckets.

What started out clear and pure picks up what the eye cannot see, passing through the air over factories and congested highways. It meets the farmlands and countryside where pesticides have been sprayed. The drops form a community within a bucket that last held carwash suds just a few days before.

Clear as rain. These drops land on my skin and all I see is skin. With time, abundance, and persistence, water cleanses. It hydrates what was on the brink of dying.

I remember drinking from the garden hose on a hot summer day. No bottled water sat in the fridge. Now, I am cautioned about the hazards of drinking from a hot garden hose. I receive annual reports from the water company on what minerals and potential contaminants may be piped into our home.

Just buy your water bottled. But how do you choose from all the options on the shelves?  Brands boast their water to be the best in purity and taste.

Drinking Water. Natural Spring Water. Purified. Distilled. Reverse Osmosis.

None of this is meant to scare anyone into avoiding water! By all means - stay hydrated! Do a quick internet search and you will find the human body is composed of 60 – 70% water, depending on your source. Some organs in the human body are in the 80th percentile. My concern is where is my water being sourced and has it been truly verified as safe for consumption?

How about the Living Water? Am I getting to know Jesus by spending time talking to Him and listening to Him through His word? Or am I getting to know Him through other’s stories about Him and what He has done in their lives, told them through their prayer life and Bible studies? I do not discount the value of listening to the testimonies of others; but, it is essential to our own spiritual development to go straight to the Word, reading and meditating on it. Conversing one on one with the Author and Perfecter of our faith. How will I know the information being offered to me is right-as-rain, untarnished by human ideology and worldly perspective unless I know the source personally?

Job 36:27-28, NKJV

For [God] draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man.

Isaiah 58:11, NKJV

The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

Jeremiah 2:13, NKJV

For My people have committed two evils:

They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,

And hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water.

John 4:10-14, NKJV

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

The woman said to Him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

I may pour the rainwater collected in buckets onto my flowering plants, but I wouldn’t pour it into my water cup.  When I go to a restaurant and order a glass of water, I am going to look into the water to see if there is anything that shouldn’t be there. If it came from a faucet, no filter, and perhaps older pipes, I would taste a difference. I know what pure water should taste like because I’ve been drinking enough of it every day. An individual from an impoverished area or an area stricken by catastrophic storms may be thankful to drink from an unfiltered tap simply because it is cleaner than what they have been exposed to; but, once you have drawn directly from a pure source, tasted water as clean as it can be, your thirst will forever be changed. Only drinking from the One Pure Source will ever suffice!

Go to God’s Word. Drink it in. Saturate your soul with the Living Water.