Dirty Water

I grew up wrestling. In doing so I eventually came to the place where cutting weight was called upon, and in doing so I often had to go hours on end, and a few times more time than that, without water. I can remember one time when I was a senior in high school spending time and energy getting down to the right weight upon a scale before going to bed. After doing such I tiredly climbed into the shower to wash the weight of the day off myself. After getting out I checked my weight once more, just to be sure, and found that I was heavier than when I had climbed in. I had gone so long without water, my body bellowed out that I needed it but I denied what my body called out for. In the shower, as the water fell past my lips I drank. I drank without thinking about it. I desired a cool drink that would satisfy. But the only thing that passed by my lips was the hot water of a winter shower, and as it passed by my lips I drank it in. Without telling myself to, my body desired a cool drink but settled for what was there.

If such can be true for the water our body needs how much more can it be true for water more sustainable. When I was 17 I drank a pound of water in the shower. I would have rather had a cool drink to quench my thirst, but instead I drank hot bath water.

Sitting at the bar of a coffee shop here in Opelika about two weeks ago I was reading as a friend of mine sat down next to me. An empty coffee shop at 7am and he sat right next to me. I shifted over and continued to read. He pulled out a book to do the same and shortly after inquired of me an opinion of what he had read, and shortly after an early morning after a late night I wanted to give him none. I wanted to be left alone. But as we began to talk I realized that this was becoming more than a normal morning talk at the local coffee shop.

We began to talk of God and what Christ had come to offer so long ago, when He walked the earth and allowed people to see His face and hear His voice. Which is what He still claims to offer us now. As we talked I told my friend that Christ offers us to fill our cup with living water, He offers us a cool cup of grace to give relief from the heat of this world. I also told him that so often the cup we hold we fill with dirty water. We are allowed a cup of living water, Christ calls us to hold it under a waterfall of grace as to never run out. But so often we allow other things to seem more important. We take for granted what that cup of grace tastes like. We walk away and find ourself looking for whatever will quench the thirst that we find within ourselves. We catch ourselves drinking dirty water.

So what do we do then...what do we do when we are drinking dirty water?

We do the same as we did the first time, we take our cup and place it back in that waterfall of grace. We go back to be washed in the water and drink our fill of that cool water that will satisfy, not the dirty water that simply makes us sick.

For my friend at the shop that day I got to watch him drink that water for the first time. And for me, writing this in the witching hour, I need to come back and drink it again. For as I often do, I have spent days too long filling my cup with dirty water.