Respect and water and the Almighty. How on earth do these things connect in my mind? Somehow, they’re doing just that on this gray, cold, winter evening. Today we had pathetic spits of rain coming down as we drove home from out of state. The sky was fickle on whether to let drops go or to hold them in. Once home though I looked out the kitchen window and my thoughts of water meshed with thoughts about the great Lord God Almighty and their connection.

Our daughter’s first encounter with wild water came in the form of a thunderstorm meeting a small, but decent sized river running behind our house. On that particular day of our daughter’s infancy, the rain came down in sheets – no fickleness there. When I realized the world outside had transformed from green and brown to gray and silver, I swept her up, opened the sliding door and stood beneath the house overhang. I  let her feel mist from the rain hitting the roof.  We (mostly me) watched these sheets of rain meld with the river in a silvery show of beauty, grace and power.

Ah, water! I hadn’t realized how much I appreciate water in various forms until I experienced an unexpected internship. My placement, in a small town, was a semi-desert area in southern Colorado. The experience was intense on many levels, but for this setting, the notable piece was my relationship with water and how it changed my reading of scripture.

Days there were always hot. Nights were usually cool, but rain seldom came. I called my own mama one day bemoaning the fact that rain hadn’t fallen yet  – despite the few tantalizing drops that fell on my borrowed car. She (born out west) gently responded by informing me that I am a child of the midwest who is used to rain. I needed to stop wishing for it and assuming it would come. 

I read scripture differently that summer. I read the texts about water at the well, streams in the desserts and water turned to wine with a new interest – yearning, actually. I wanted that water. I wanted to feel it on my body. I wanted to see it dripping in puddles. I wanted to smell it in the air. But, no. Instead I climbed into the car after sitting at the library for a few hours and experienced a small burn on my skin when I picked up the seatbelt. Turns out metal in the sun, at 110 degrees, in the car actually burns flesh.

Fast forward about five years and I find myself on an island off of an island of Scotland. The island runs one mile wide and three miles long. I am acutely aware of the water all around and I sit thinking about the power water could have on a little blob of land sticking up from a random location on the ocean floor like this particular blob of land I’m currently inhabiting.

A week into my stay I’m sitting with another volunteer (of many) from England who arrived the same day I arrived. Both of us happen to be off duty and we sit by the water watching wave after wave magically, seamlessly materialize and dissipate. We talk of God. She shares a story of one youth asking her youth group leader why we’d want to “fear” the Lord. The adult – whoever she was – wisely referred to the ocean. Children from England must have a better grasp of the power of waves because the story ends with the child responding with silence. The woman told this child that God should be respected like the ocean needs respect. She (the ocean) is beautiful, she’s refreshing, she’s calming and she can be fun, but she’s also mighty powerful. She can throw up her skirt and engulf you. She can destroy ships and crash onto land devouring everything in her path. You don’t screw around with the ocean. You learn to read her and politely decline a playdate when she’s thrashing about. Yearning for water, fearing the might of it, mesmerized by its beauty and being dependent on it to nurture us and not overwhelm us seems tantamount to our relationship with the creator. 

Respect for that wildness is increasing in me. The spiritual aspect of water is important, but so is the factual. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water…the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.” If that doesn’t capture your attention, pay attention to the facts from the USGS regarding our world. “About 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water…Water is never sitting still. Thanks to the water cycle, our planet’s water supply is constantly moving from one place to another and from one form to another. “

It’s almost like water is alive. It fills our bodies and it moves around the world… kinda like the Holy One. Water, like God, deserves our yearning and our respect. Water is life. It is beautiful and powerful. And we take it for granted. I’ve been gifted recently with an intense awareness of my privilege of warm running water – especially at the kitchen sink when the days are cold and gray. Running my hands under warm, running water always feels so good. It’s a miracle, really, that the water of life can find its way so easily into my kitchen and warm these humble stay-at-home hands.

There’s no fickleness here. My goal, in regards to our daughter, is to help her realize the importance of water on many levels: how it helps her body function, how it moves around the earth, how it brings life to the spirit of a person. Hopefully she’ll learn to respect it and yearn for it like I yearn for her to respect the Almighty.