Out Our Way: Come to the water - John 7:37-38

Out our way, we look for the rain and snowmelt runoff to keep the creeks flowing and the reservoirs full. But sometimes the rains are slow coming and occasionally the Alberta Clippers don't visit us as often as usual and we have a dry spring. In times like these we often experience drought. Up on the Tiger Ridge, the upper pasture turns yellow and even brown by mid-August and even those dangerous mud holes become dry and hard.  

I have never actually experienced such hard times in my short time riding with Charlie, but I have run into a few old-timers who have , and I am grateful to have "missed the party." The cattle I worked - even occasionally on the open range area out by Beaver Creek - are fairly docile and domesticated, not that I recommend trying to make one into a pet, but even they can get a bit "rangey" like the fabled long horns on the old trail drives we all have heard about, especially when the creeks run dry.

The closest I have ever been to anything like that was working with Charlie to get the herd down to winter pasture late in the Fall when the upper pasture was dried out, overgrazed, and the reservoir was nearly dry. As the least skilled and poorest hand on the round up, I always end up riding "drag" so I don't see what happens up front - by the way, be careful with the term around non-westerners - but I gather when the leads smell the water up ahead they often begin to bellow and trot and even run. No need to ride point, flank , or sweep - just get out of the way. 

As you know, Jesus was a Jew in the Middle East, and while I have never been there, I am told that it is hot, dusty , and fairly arid. Water is, and always has been an issue. (Consider the Samaritan woman's take recorded in John 4:15). No wonder that Jesus often used water as a symbol of God's grace and love. Like the great song says, " Come to the water, stand by My side; I know you are thirsty, you won't be denied."

I have seen thirsty cattle catching the smell of fresh water and rushing forward to quench their thirst. I have felt that same sense of relief and hope when, dragged down by my sense of hopelessness, inadequacies, and frustration at so many failures. "I am useless - a loser - a total foul up!"

And then from somewhere I get a "whiff of the Living Water" and my thirst to become the actual person I now only pretend to be becomes overwhelming. For then comes a whisper: Come to the water!  

I resist because it means leaving the old pasture behind. It is over grazed, dried out, and dying ... but I am used to it. Even so, I begin to realize the old streams of pop culture I once depended on were shallow at best and now are drying out. The vast grazing grounds of self-centered gratification that I thought would last forever are now nearly gone and what remains is dried out and dead and will not sustain me. Come to the water!

Some of those I once followed as the elites of the herd stand in the way saying there is no water ahead - and some of the foolish ones believe them and turn back to the barren and arid lands. But somehow I caught a whiff of the waters ahead ( the Holy Spirit is often symbolized by wind) and the whisper remains, COME TO THE WATER!  

Like the song says, "Come to the water, stand by My side; I know you are thirsty, you won't be denied! I felt every teardrop, that in darkness you cried, and I strove to remind you, that for those tears I died." Come to the water!

Be blessed and be a blessing!

Brother John

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The Rev. John Bruington is the retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Havre. He now lives in Colorado, but continues to write "Out Our Way." He can be reached for comment or dialogue at [email protected].