Mar. 5, 2003
Blogging for Lent
I'm starting this blog as part of my Lenten discipline of maintaining a journal. I know that a blog and a journal aren't precisely the same, but the pressure to publish every day may give my the push I need to maintain regularity. Who knows where their life & thoughts will lead in the long run, but for now, I expect it to start with some meditations (some on Bible passages, some not) and then wander off on paths of it's own.

This first thought is a meditation from January that I've shared with several others. It seems to hold significance for many people, but oddly enough, means something a little bit different to each person who reads it.

Watering the Desert
When a desert suddenly gets water, even just a little bit, it bursts out in a profusion of growth. But, the water often doesn’t last and neither does the growth.


The only way a desert can cease to be a desert is to obtain a continuing source of water-it may be from rain, a river, or a well, but something has to change in the landscape for the climate for the desert to be permanently changed.


If we are living in a spiritual desert, we have to find a way to change our spiritual landscape in order to regularly receive the water we need to have growth. We have to find a way to dig a well, tap into a river or even purify water from the sea. Whatever it is, we have to draw water from God’s river of life into our lives regularly, daily even, in order to nurture tender new growth and strengthen old, established trees.


Digging the well, diverting water from the river-these are hard work, work that takes many days, a little at a time. It takes a while to reach the water, time that you put in the effort without necessarily seeing any rewards. But, if you keep on digging the ditch, a little each day, eventually the water breaks through, the desert is watered and the landscape changes permanently.
January 2003