BRINGING WATER OUT OF A ROCK

One of my journals, Homiletics (okay, the cat is out of the bag: I crib an idea now and then), interviewed novelist and poet Kathleen Norris on various spiritual themes, one of which was dealing with those dry and seemingly barren times in our spiritual journey, times everyone has sooner or later and more often than one would desire.

    Homiletics: “How do we come to terms with the barren landscapes of our lives? When we feel like we are on that barren plain, is it our task to try to transform it into a Garden of Eden or live through it and be one with it?”

    Norris: “I think living through it is the key. And when the flowers bloom in the desert, it’s God’s doing…. Living through it and knowing there is a through path and trying to stay on it, or asking God to help you stay on it, is really the key. Because it is God who will bring water out of the rock. We need to make ourselves receptive to these moments when it happens.”

    Sometimes we do choose the wrong part. We think we are the ones who have to bring life out of death, make water flow from the rock. We are wrong, because that is not only not our job. We simply cannot do it. It is God who makes resurrection happen. Ours is simply to stay the course, remain on the path, and then allow God to do what God does best and what only God can do. It is difficult enough to stay on the path because we somehow believe that getting off the path and finding that new life is the easier way. It is not.

    Several years ago Arlena and I visited Mt. St. Helen ’s. The devastation was still quite evident and our travels around the volcano were quite restricted. We were allowed to walk some paths but were warned time and again to stay on the path – and we did. We did not know what to expect or what we would find along those paths. We stopped along the way and were startled to observe God at work. Tiny flowers were pushing their way through all that destruction and volcanic ash all on their own. Human beings had nothing to do with the resurrection taking place. Our job was to stay on the path, stay out of the way and let God do what God does.

    The same is true in our own lives when we discover we are in what seems like a barren wasteland where nothing is growing and death seems almost all-consuming. We feel dry and parched and all alone. We find it difficult to believe that if we simply stay the course, as difficult as that is, the path will lead us to new life, that God will bring water out of a rock, water that will refresh and renew us. But God will if we will.

    All this may sound like literary prose rather than literal fact, but we know it is not. Each of us has walked those barren and dry roads, gone off them trying to find the water of life all on our own, only to make matters worse. And each has walked those same paths and stayed the course and found that rock of refreshment, renewal and resurrection God left for us. As Norris says, what we need do is make ourselves receptive to those moments when they happen; and happen they will, if we but stay on the path.            

WJP