Nothing catches your attention like something that isn’t supposed to be where it is. For example, a flower in the crevice of a rock, a horse in a house, a cordless drill on a store’s cosmetics aisle, gasoline in the refrigerator, and a water sprinkler in Liberia, West Africa. When you see these kinds of things, your brain tries to reconcile what it is seeing and then the analysis begins: HOW could this be?!

God is the God of the impossible. Since the famous phrase, “Let there be light!” He has been blowing man’s mortal, finite minds with the spectacular and unimaginable. I believe this is His way of letting us know there is someone greater than us who holds it all, knows it all and is in control of it all. In other words, He is trying to get our attention. He wants us to analyze, then finalize, that “He is greater, He is stronger, He’s the God of ‘possible’”.*

My husband is in Franktown, Liberia (west Africa), right now with a team that is making water possible for this remote town that currently only has water, and thus crops, for 6 months of the year, during the rainy season. The dry season usually sees daily temps of 90^oF and above, with brutal humidity. Anyone who has had a garden in the summer in the south knows the impossibility of keeping a garden alive in that heat with no rain. Setting a sprinkler for this length of time only serves to draw parched birds, critters, and children, who come run, play, and bathe in the water, but is little help to the withering plants.  Liberia has 6 months of this kind of drought! They are located on a river that is reduced to a sluggish trickle during the dry time. Making water available during this time, up until now, has been impossible. The project of this team has been to bring the hope of crops, and thus food and income, to the people of Franktown via a pump and a drip irrigation system to a nearby field—a daunting task. Yet being driven by their faith in and love for Jesus, the team has bundled their collective skills and talents to bring to local families the joy of a hope in what they have not seen or experienced – crops in the drought. The team and the local families are working hard together toward this common goal. Locals stepped out in faith by giving up family plots of land to be used for this “experiment” and by accepting Americans coming in saying “we think we can help.” There have been many blockades along the way, but after a back-breaking couple of weeks and many obstacles overcome, the Lord saw fit to open the dams of heaven and let the water flow! The pump worked and the water is now serving the field! (See above picture!) There was miracle upon miracle leading up to that moment, and the Lord literally rained down His blessing and the water came forth. The team was able to proclaim God’s glory to the families.

Often in our personal lives, we are in a dry and weary land. There is joy and hope in Jesus. If we pause to look backward, we can see evidence of God’s faithfulness as He carried us through other droughts where the impossible was made possible. A song that originated in Africa, says “Even when I don’t see it, you’re working, even when I don’t feel it, you’re working, you never stop, you never stop working. Waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness, my God, that is who You are.”** In this case we could say that He is water in the dry and weary land. Jesus satisfies the soul in dry and scorched places where it doesn’t seem possible, or make sense. The prophet Isaiah corroborates this: “The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Isaiah 58:11)

Jesus even says of Himself: “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 4:14)

When we contain the living, quenching, miraculous, soul-filling water that comes from Jesus, we then can spill the joy onto others! “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive”. John 7: 38-39

The picture of these Liberian men dancing in the sprinkling water made me think of children. Running through the sprinkler on a hot, dry day is so much fun. However, it is so much more fun when you have others with whom you can share and laugh and play. So, if you are feeling parched, come run through the sprinkler of the living water. If you are already there, make sure you tell your friends to come on in, the water is SO fine!
  *Song In Jesus Name (God of Possible) by Katy Nichole
  **Song Waymaker by Sinach