Water Pours and So Do Our Hearts
Yesterday Ray and I were able to squeeze in a walk in the middle of the day in between the showers. On some days it’s hard to be thankful for rain. Rain isn’t the only one of God’s blessings that we find it easy to complain about. I once heard a speaker talk about the fact that the things we usually complain about are our blessings. So true.
We are thankful for water when it is doing what we want it to do when we want it to do it. Taking a bath in the claw-footed tub in the old house where I grew up and going swimming in Marrowbone Creek are two of my earliest water memories.
Water is amazing and so versatile. It nourishes our bodies and cleans our dirty floors. We can use water to cook our food or to cool it down.
Ships float on water. Plants pull it up from the ground. Bears stick their paws in it and pull out fish.
Water pours. It evaporates. It freezes. It falls from the sky in flakes. We can bunch those flakes together in our hands and make a snowball or a snowman.
It’s that pouring characteristic that causes me trouble. I am highly-distractible, especially in the kitchen. I am forever putting a glass or pitcher or pot on the counter, turning on the spigot, and turning to do something else. There goes the water off the side of the counter and onto the floor again! Mary Evelyn made up a song to the tune of “Oh, Be Careful Little Eyes What You See”: “I will not let the water overflow. I will not let the water overflow. Oh, I will not let the water, I will not let the water, I will not let the water overflow.” It works–when I sing it.
I guess my worst spill happened on a summer morning back in 1994. John and I had been home from Mexico for a little more than a day. The following morning the whole family was heading to Idaho. I began to fill up the sink in the bathroom to wash something out by hand and went into the den. I’m sure I was only going to be gone for a minute. One or more of the kids was watching “Little House on the Prairie.” I joined them, forgetting all about what was supposed to be happening in the bathroom.
Several minutes later someone realized that water was dripping through the bathroom floor onto storage boxes in the basement. I called Ray in a panic. He graciously came home from work for a while to help pull boxes onto the driveway to dry in the sun. I am thankful that the God Who made water so that it can pour also made it so that it can evaporate! We needed all the evaporation we could get that day.
Because we  live with water every day, we all know what pouring is like–those of us who pour with abandon and those of us who pour the right amount at the right place and for the right length of time. God uses physical things we are around every day to teach us spiritual lessons. I wonder if He laughs when I pour water with abandon. I know He is pleased when we pour out our hearts that way.
Trust in Him at all times, O people;
Pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us.
Psalm 62:8, NASB