In recent weeks, our South Florida community has experienced record-setting drought. My family moved here four months ago and we’ve only seen it rain a few times (including today praise God!). We got a list of water-conservation instructions from local authorities. We double checked we didn’t accidentally move to California or Arizona. I didn’t realize the wetlands could experience drought but apparently they can.
As I watch the water level of our local pond sink a little more each week, I get this algae-encircled visual of everything in our world right now. Drought of income. Drought of church gatherings. Drought of health. Drought of community. Drought of resources.
Where is hope when the water runs dry?
Genesis 2 is the often overlooked account of creation, but I think it gives a beautiful picture of God’s watering power.
Genesis 2:5-6 says, “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground…”
Before the first drop of rain fell from the sky, the entire Earth was well watered. How was this possible? God could have made it rain first, but he didn’t.
He chose to water His brand new Earth from within.
The HCSB says “But water would come out of the ground and water the entire surface of the land” (Gen 2:6).
In this season of extreme drought, I am reminded that God does not need rain to water his creation. Followers of Christ are not and never have been watered from external sources. Our sustenance does not fall on us, it comes from the living water inside us — Jesus Christ.
This is why Jesus can tell a spiritually dehydrated woman at a well: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4).
Those saved by Christ don’t walk around with a bucket trying to catch runoff rain water. We walk around full of a fountain, welling up inside us for eternal life. We have the fountain. We are watered by Christ himself from within.
Jeremiah 17:7-8 says the man who trusts in the Lord, “is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes… and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
We aren’t anxious in the year of drought. We have a living fountain within us, the Lord Jesus, who took our sins on the cross and gave us his righteousness and the Holy Spirit. Our roots are in him alone.
No one can manufacture this holy watering. The world is waking up to this as their ponds sink a little lower each day.
While the world withers, believers produce fruit. While the world grows weaker, believers grow stronger. While the world wears themselves out, believers find rest that it is finished in Christ. While the world mourns without any hope, we grieve as those with a mighty hope! You have the fountain within you. Be ready to give an answer to those who ask you.
Christ is able to make us fruit-bearing mothers, wives, friends, grandmothers, sisters, and caregivers while all the world is in drought. When every other source runs dry, he will keep his daughters saturated to the full with his grace and salvation with his very presence and fullness of joy. Even his rest.
Every time you look to a dry sky in this season, be reminded of the living fountain within you. Your roots are deeper than you know and he will water you from within.
Psalm 65:9 You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.