Water, water, every where,

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.           Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sitting in the church service surrounded by faith song and prayer, there are still times when it seems as if the streams are flowing all around, yet inside the dryness is complete. The end of the message nears, yet so little of its words have penetrated that we may go home feeling as though we had stayed on the sofa instead of attending our worship meeting. But for those times also, God has given us a promise. For those deserts that are specially our own, He has given us His own word that we can set our sites on better things. In the place where all the boards of our life feel as if they were pulling apart from one another and the structure of our hopes appears prepared to fail apart: He comes. He sits by our well of struggles and rejections. He comes to the field where we are gathering our last hopes and asks of us a gift. We may have only the tiniest bit of oil and flour left to prepare an offering to him, yet He requires it before the blessing comes. In that driest hour will we dare to pour out as a drink offering the last drops of our own dreams? That choice is where we may learn what it really means to put all our hope in Him alone.

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, Psalm 33:18

He sees us and He has promised streams of life in the most unlikely place. With our Lord there is no desert so dry that His streams of life cannot spring up. Today is still the day when all our hope can stay steadfast in Him through this quickly passing wilderness chapter of our life.