To Survive Hard Times ~ Holy Experience

When I ask him he’s still got his shovel in hand, and he nods and says he can’t see why not, that it’s late enough in May, warm enough, sure, plant the tomatoes, and since Dutch Father-in-law, Opa, has more than six decades of digging under his gardening nails, I dig them in, all fifty two of the paste Romas and juicy Better Boys.

The boys keep the tiller going.

Hope’s kneeling before Opa bent with spade and he pierces open ground and Hope slides in a spud, the eyes earth-side. Because the growth comes from the eyes. How many rows can you plant with a hundred pounds of potatoes? Opa and Hope are going to find out. Hope's making conversation with Opa, loudly, for those hearing aids turned right up, and I can hear her words in dusky light, “So… what did you do this week, Opa?”

They’re planting more than spuds.

“You need any more over there?” Malakai’s got another pail of halved seed potatoes to run to the tater planters. Levi brings me another flat of tomatoes and Shalom leans over my shoulder, her tendrils tickling. “How can I help you, Mama? Can I do something?”

“You could help me, Shalom.” Levi takes her hand. “Just slide each plant out like this… real slow… and then put it in Mama’s holes with me, okay?”

Farmer Husband, in from fields and a tractor seat, finds all his kids, his wife, his father out here in the dirt, farming too. “Looks good.” He smiles, a curve of white in the dirt he wears. “Anything left for me to do?”

I toss him a package of squash seeds. He catches seeds and my wink. “I think there’s space on the other side of where we planted the beans?” I hip check him on his way past and he throws a grin over his shoulder.

Three generations work the dust of the ground together and I don’t want it to end.

The day after blows in on a wind. A hot, searing wind. Opa would have winced to see those 16 pepper plants, those 52 tomato plants, ragged and wind-whipped. Trying to survive hard times.

Before noon meal, I drag out coiling hose, a rubber river across the grass, and hunch over each weary stalk with momentary protection from the beating gusts.

There’s a drink for the wilting.

The wind can buffet; economy, sickness, discouragement. The sun can scorch; heartbreak, parent-ache, marriage-burn. But if we have water….. if we have water, we can survive.

I’m arched over each tomato, wind-breaker and water-carrier, and I think I know what element-weary souls need. Water of the Word. A Daily Drinking of the Word and we’ll revive. We’ll survive.

After noon-meal, we do that, drink. I open to Isa. 58; we each do, our table Bibles in hand. It’s our reading for the month of May, each day, again and again, spurred on by a friend to thirty days of reading Isa. 58. The retracing of these words each day reshapes hearts. We recite words together and are quenched:

“and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land…
You will be like a well-watered garden.”

I stop mid-swallow.

A well-watered garden. What is it again that makes me like a well-watered garden? I know winds, I know sun, I know daily drooping. Don’t I just need this, the water of the Word?

His Word says that it’ll take more than His Word. I’ll have to spend myself. I’ll have to give myself to those who are empty, I’ll have take part of me to meet the needs of those weighed down, to use part of me to lift their burden. The truth’s always in the paradox: If I pour out … I will be like a well-watered garden.

But doesn't His Word say simply that if we believe in Him, streams of living water will flow from within us? (Jn. 7:38) But do we only genuinely believe when we do? Elisabeth Elliot writes “The order of the Christian's assignment is: hear, do, know.” We hear His Word, then we do it, and only then can we say our belief is knowing Him.

Do we only really fully believe in Him when we do life like Him? Spending days on the behalf of the hungry (in our homes, in our communities, around the globe), satisfying the needs of the oppressed (weighed down people in the houses beside us, the pews behind us, the nations around the world from us.) Only then do we really believe. Then there’s streams of living water flowing from within us. Then we are a well-watered garden.

The belief is only belief when it has hands and feet.

We are only watered when we water.

I close my Bible, washed with the water of the Word. But for there to be water within, streams of living waters flowing from within, watering me, I'll have to open the tap and pour out.