Out Our Way: The smell of water - Isaiah 30:21

Out our way, the days can grow dry and hot, especially when the rains are slow in coming. Up in the summer pasture on the Tiger Ridge, the reservoir begins to shrink as the grass turns dry and yellow by fall when it is time to move the herd. If it has been an especially dry summer, by fall roundup the cattle are desperate for water. That was why it was so hard to move them away from the nearly dried-out water hole that fall when Charley and I had to call in reinforcements to move them to the fall pasture. They were thirsty and though there was little water left and it would soon be gone, they wanted to stay close to it. Instead of two cowhands it took five to force the herd to the lower pasture … and they resented and resisted the move.

But as they bawled their displeasure and kept trying to break away — we kept them moving. And then the change. The lead cows smelled the water of the lower reservoir — a large and plenteous body of water — and before them lay open pasture land, filled with tall untouched grass as far as they could see. The resisting herd began to pick up speed and nearly became a stampede as the smell of water drifted back through the herd and they all realized fresh water lay ahead.

Of course, Charlie and I and the rest of the crew had always known the water and good grazing was there — but the cows did not. So we had to persuade them to move, and so we had to be a bit forceful in moving them down the trail, but when they smelled the water, they understood: “This is the way; walk in it!”

I often find myself — and many others — acting like that herd in the dried out northern pasture and refusing to budge even though God has something better awaiting me. Like many a bull-headed cow — and bull — I resist the urgings of the Lord to move forward out of my “comfort zone,” even when it is drying up all around me. Often He has to force me to love and I bawl and below and try to go back, but He heads me off. Like the cattle, I don’t know where I am going or why, and so, because I don’t know and trust Him as I should, I resist. But He keeps pushing me.

Then somewhere along the way I get the message: “This is the way; walk in it!” And like the cattle who finally smell the water ahead, I start moving forward eagerly and anticipate the quenching of my spiritual and mental thirst. “Yes! Now I begin to understand! Yes, I begin to realize God has pushed me this way for my good and benefit — even though it was beyond my ability to understand.”

As you read the Bible — and especially the Old Testament — you see this same care and concern over and over again. Moses and Aaron — His “cowhands” — leading Israel out of Egypt and into the Wilderness for 40 years as they resisted, bawled and bellowed and tried to break away,- until they finally came to the Promised Land. Over the years God sent other cowhands, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Daniel and so forth.

He is still sending us cowhands here and there and, despite the size of the herd, He is still moving us forward. Granted, we don’t know many of these cowhands He has sent — often we only know one or two working with our small part of the overall herd — but they are there.

The few Roman Catholics in Poland who started the Solidarity movement moved it to the shipyards, where it caught national and international attention. The freedom-loving Poles responded and the worn fabric of the Iron curtain begin to fray and fall apart. The Romanian Reformed — Presbyterian — pastor who defied the corrupt Communist government and when the dictator sought to arrest him not only met open rebellion, but eventual revolt throughout the nation that led to his downfall and the Communists. The rise of Orthodox Christians in Russia who refused to remain silenced and would no longer allow their priests to be hauled off to the Soviet Gulags. As Stalin’s party fell apart the Church rose up out of the ashes. Lenin’s mummified remains remain in the Kremlin but the once silenced church bells of the Kremlin churches are now ringing again.

In what was once East Germany, Bible studies led to young people marching against the Communists in Leipzig and them across Germany and eventually to them tearing down the Berlin Wall. Though the New York Times censored his speech, the first president of the Czech Republic spoke of the Reformation God has begun in Eastern Europe and the rising of the Church to topple the old regimes and restore freedom. As a Coptic Orthodox Priest in Egypt remarked to an American pastor, “You people in the west have fallen asleep and no longer listen for God. We remain awake and not only hear Him, but see Him amongst us.”

These “unsung” cowhands of God are all around and though we of the bovine mentality bawl and bellow against His hands - they know where He is leading us. They have heard His voice: “This is the way; walk in it.” Though we may still resist Him, His hands will keep pushing us until we “smell the water” and realize this is ineed the way and eagerly walk in it!

Blessings, and keep sniffing — the water is there!

Brother John Briungton