FAY ROWE

It's raining today. All day.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that on Saturday my husband and I pruned back to nothing the bush that blocked the sprinkler head that should have been watering our parched lawn. And nothing to do with the little sprinkler I bought to give the grass a longer watering than the automated sprinkler would.

It's terrible what a lack of water will do to a patch of grass. Our poor patch has been deprived of water for at least two summers now (I know; we should have figured out the problem much earlier) so you can imagine its state. Varieties of weeds I have never before encountered moved in. The few blades of grass that clung tenaciously to the hard dirt cried out (I could hear it!) for help, for life-sustaining water.

Our body does that, too. It cries out for water. Dehydration is not pretty, and it's dangerous.

Our souls and spirits need water too, the kind that can be found only in one place. Sometimes, even though everything around us is good and we are happy with the circumstances of the moment, if we are quiet we can still tell that something inside is dry.

All we need is the soul refreshment that comes from looking at his face, and the spirit life that comes from the water of his word. But sometimes, it takes us a while to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it.

When we do, though, it doesn't take long for restoration to begin.

"Oh God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longest for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is" (Psalm 63:1).