Floods and Tears and Jesus Are Water

Sorry about the difficult reading. My enter/return is not working.

If you've watched any sort of national news in the past week, then there is a good chance you've seen the exorbitant amount of flooding that has taken place very near our home. Within 7 miles of where we live, there are three miles of road still shut down while flood waters recede. Then some road re-building will have to be done. At least 7 people lost their lives last week while getting caught in this stuff.

But even closer, within one mile of my MIL's home, another life was claimed yesterday by this natural disaster. A young high school boy was jogging with his track team around the lake dam when three of them apparently slipped in. He is from the same high school where my husband graduated. Two of the boys were able to fight the currents and swim out. But this young man had injured shoulders and the flow of water pushed him under. Right now this dam is running at full capacity draining the very flood waters shown above.
I have such sadness for his family.

This morning here at our house was AWFUL! But not equally. My daughter provoked an episode that far tops ANY tantrum or outburst we have ever experienced with any of our kids. It was something I imagined we would probably realistically go through at some point in our child rearing. After all, part of our jobs as parents are to root out sin in our children's hearts and I imagine every parent could at least once expect it all to come hurling out in one explosive eruption. So I was driving home from school drop-off, still feeling too stern and controlled to cry, but certainly wanting to, thinking about what I had told my daughter in all her rage. "Life could be a lot worse than you have it right now."

And that young man came to my mind as an example - with a simple devotion from the Heavenly Father.

That young boy was killed by water. Of all things. Water. A rush of H2O ordained by God Himself. However difficult that is to understand. And yet, water is the most basic requirement we have for physical life. It is the very thing that would kill us the quickest should we go without it. The very water that is on the inside sustaining, refreshing, and life-giving, also has the potential to be powerfully deadly from the outside. No wonder Jesus is called the Living Water. To give us life, He MUST BE on the inside. He can not merely be a religious knowledge, a rush of thoughts, or an ideal, or something to get around to one day when it's convenient. From the inside, He sustains our very lives. But from the outside, He has the power and potential to bring death in an instant by the rush of His presence not in us. Amazing. At least to me, for this day.

I certainly hope that the allegory for this young man stops with a mental picture. I'm hoping that someone at sometime had told him about the Living Waters that quench every need, and that he had taken a big swig of Jesus. And I hope you have too.

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:14

Lord, please comfort the devastated family of this handsome young man. In Jesus name.