Looking out at the dreary winter landscape that is my backyard in February, I have to rally my senses to look forward to a lovelier season…beautiful, green, blossomy, sneeze-inducing Spring! I can hardly wait for the bare trees to be covered in new leaves and the yellowed grass to be green again. When Spring arrives, I want to throw open the windows and call birds to come perch on my outstretched finger. I feel the need to quote King Solomon: “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” We made it! Winter is over!
As much as I love the warmer weather, something that comes hand-in-hand with increased temperatures and sunshine is the need to water those beautiful flowers and tomatoes I’m attempting to keep alive on my front porch and around my patio. I pull out watering cans and uncoil hoses, and I get to the business of soaking my plants.
Inevitably, I’ll encounter that moment when the water is no longer gushing. This lack of gush is usually accompanied by a particular noise. It’s a sound made of high notes of building pressure, the sound of a kink in my hose. As regular as it is frustrating, it happens to every gardener from time to time. I look for the source of the stoppage, the crimp in the hose. Then I work to unbend it and right the tube so that the water can flow through easily again.
Seeing that meager drip of water trickling from a kinked garden hose onto the parched soil of my flower beds reminds me of when I feel spiritually thirsty. When King David was faced with trials in the desert of Judah, being hounded by his enemies beaten down and alone, he wrote the words to Psalm 63. “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”
In his psalm of prayer, David states the problem (he’s in a dry and weary land), declares what he knows about God (he’s seen God’s power and glory), and then he proclaims what he will do (he’ll praise God as long as he lives). David doesn’t say, “Once everything gets fixed and no one is hunting me and I’m back home where it’s comfortable, I’ll praise you, God.” He gets busy praising right away, down on his knees on the hot desert sand.
I love what theologian Charles Spurgeon said about this passage: “Learn from this, and do not say, ‘I will get into communion with God when I feel better,’ but long for communion now. It is one of the temptations of the devil to tell you not to pray when you do not feel like praying. Pray twice as much then.”
We’ll have times when there’s a kink in the flow of our spiritual garden hose. It’s inevitable since we’re mortal creatures living in a fallen world. For one reason or another, it’s just going to happen. So when we’re thirsty, we can remember David’s example, along with Jesus’ words in John 7. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” So go to the Ultimate De-Kinker, pray to Him and praise His name. Then get ready for that living water to come gushing out.
