(Part 1)
by Teri Ong
[Part 1 of this blog was written on Monday, Sept. 9, 2013 and was presented to the Inklings Club that meets at the Eaton Library on second Mondays. What would unfold during the rest of the week will be covered in Part 2.]
We just got an inch of rain in the last hour. That is not very remarkable in certain parts of the world, but it is here in Greeley, Colorado. We only get an average of an inch per month. Having spent several years of my childhood in Seattle, Washington, I have an in-bred taste for gray drizzly days, a taste which is rarely fulfilled. So just as I was about to sit down and do a little writing, I got caught up in watching the unusual cloud formations, listening to the continuous ambient rumble of thunder, and dashing about in the downpour to move our vehicles out of the likely path of street flooding.
Just this morning Steve was telling me about D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ treatment of the story of Jacob opening his father’s wells, which had been stopped up with debris by his enemies. It is in his book on revival, and his take on the story is astutely allegorical. He makes the application that if we are to experience the refreshing waters of revival, we need to clear out the debris that is hindering the free flow of those waters. We need to go to the known source of good supply and remove everything that shouldn’t be there. Lloyd-Jones’ metaphoric understanding is appropriate since it is a metaphor used by Jesus Himself (John 4).
Besides air, water is the thing we need most urgently and persistently. It is no wonder that the Holy Spirit is related to breath and air in Scripture and that the Word of God, both written and Living, is compared to life-giving water. There is no real life apart from those things.
We have just come through a prolonged period of extremely high temperatures and almost no rain. For that reason, I have no trouble feeling the reality of the spiritual drought that our state is in right now. Colorado has plunged headlong into the legalization and official approval of all sorts of morally twisted practices this year. Our blighted neighborhood is full of many parched souls looking for refreshment in all the wrong places. It reminds me of the scene in an old western tv show I watched once where the nearly dead travelers stuck in the desert without water or transportation put pebbles in their mouths so they wouldn’t feel so dry. Our society is living life with mouths full of pebbles when what it desperately needs is Living Water.
Many Christian song writers have drawn on the symbolism. John W. Peterson wrote, “I thirsted in the barren land of sin and shame, and nothing satisfying there I found; until the blessed of cross of Christ one day I found, where springs of living water did abound.” El Nathan wrote, “Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need: mercy-drops ‘round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.” Elizabeth Codner wrote, “Lord, I hear of showers of blessing Thou art scattering full and free, showers the thirsty land refreshing; let some droppings fall on me.”
As I write, another wave of rain is passing overhead. I cannot help but think that what we need is not just a shower of blessing; we need a gusher, a flood of God’s pure water washing and cleansing. We don’t need pleasant sprinkles from a garden hose; we need something Noahic. Everything on the surface needs to be washed away and the empty aquifers far below the surface need to be filled. As vast as our human deserts are, God’s oceans are bigger. That is the kind of climate change we need to pray for.
“For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.” Isaiah 44:3-4 (KJV)
Showers and Floods (Part 2) [written Sept. 20]
To see images of the Colorado flooding visit here: http://media.reporterherald.com/2013/09/21/photos-aerial-photos-of-thompson-canyon-flood-damage/
and here: http://www.coloradoan.com/viewgal/?Avis=G2&Dato=20130916&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=309160802&Ref=PH
When I was writing on Monday, September 9 about God sending “showers and floods,” I had no idea what was in store for our state, for our town, or even for our family. The rain was to keep up for the next four days all along the Front Range of Colorado. Every river basin from the Wyoming border to Colorado Springs was to breech its banks in historic ways.
We have had major spring run-off floods in the past, and we have even had some historic “weather event” floods, such as the 1976 Big Thompson flood which happened the year after our family moved to Colorado. But none of the floods of the last 50 years impacted more than one river basin. Our urban corridor, “megalopolis,” if you will, which extends from Castle Rock to Fort Collins, sits at the base of eastern slopes of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. On our side of the Continental Divide, all of the water flows down the mountain gullies into several major rivers, which in turn flow into the South Platte River. Our whole topography is cris-crossed with rivers and streams, and all of them were about to go out of their banks at record high levels.
The site for Greeley was chosen because it sits between two rivers, the South Platte and the Cache La Poudre. In our arid climate, the city founders wanted to have a good water supply. Last week it was too much of a good thing.
During the course of the week from Sept. 9 to 15, in our state 19,000 homes were damaged, 4,000 homes were destroyed, every major highway into the mountains had significant road-closing washouts, and travel became nearly impossible because of all of the washed out bridges and water-covered roadways. At one point, 2000 people were unaccounted for because communications were cut off by power outages. Two weeks after the rain began, that number is down to around 100, with 7 known dead. Places in the mountains that we have known and loved are reduced to piles of rubble. We only know this based on pictures on news reports since it will be months before we might be able to venture back into those areas.
Last year our state experienced the worst wildfires in state history. This year we have experienced the worst flooding. Due to the ungodly course our legislators have set us on, some Christians might be quick to conclude that we are under judgment by the hand of God. But such a “judgment” is spotty and unevenly administered. I would instead agree with the opinion of Dr. Peter Masters, expressed so well in The Sword and Trowel after the epic tsunami in the Indian Ocean a few years ago. He wrote that large scale natural disasters are actually God’s gracious reminders of the eternal judgment to come that will be perfectly and evenly administered. God sends these natural messengers to cause us to evaluate our lives, priorities, and relationship to Him. They also provide opportunities for God’s people to demonstrate His love and provision to affected people.
Our son Chris and his wife Christy had to leave their home on Friday, September 13 because of the flood waters from the Big Thompson River. The waters were in their back yard within yards of their home. The trip from their house in south Loveland to our house in Greeley usually takes no more than 30 minutes. The trip that day took 3 hours because they had to go 35 miles south and 35 miles back north on a different highway to make it around the flooded area. They came to our house on the east side of the flooded area because Christy’s brother was going to be married that day. Originally, Ben and his bride were going to have an outdoor ceremony near Platteville. The name of the town tells the story of why they moved the ceremony to a church in Windsor (north east of Loveland). However, by Friday, many in the wedding party on the west side of the flooded area could not get across to the east side, and the church wedding site also had to be abandoned.
Our daughter Alice was able to get to the church and gather up some of the decorations and the pies for the reception. She got across a bridge from east to west just as the police were coming to close the bridge. She and the rest of the wedding party were able to convene at the groom’s family home in west Loveland for a sunny afternoon ceremony. That afternoon there was a brief respite from the rain, even as the flood waters continued to gush down from the mountains into the urban corridor at the foot of the mountains. Even Chris and Christy braved the trip back across from east to west and made it there in time to take photos and videos of the more than memorable ceremony.
That night we got a call from one of our church families who told us that their granddaughter had been evacuated by law enforcement from her mobile home just as it started to float away. By that evening the flood waters had reached the outskirts of Greeley, inundating Evans and Kersey. Her mobile home park was on the south side of Greeley in Evans. The granddaughter and her husband had lost everything. We found out what sizes the two of them wear. Their sizes matched my husband’s and my sizes. We were able to put together some emergency clothing, bedding, personal items, and food to help out for a day or two. We gathered with them in our dry living room and hugged and cried, thankful for life itself.
Saturday and Sunday it started raining again in all of the same areas. The whole state was holding its collective breath as rescue operations largely had to come to a halt for a few more crucial hours. Even people who work for national climate and weather centers were calling the event “biblical rainfall.” Sadly, not enough people nowadays know what that means. A friend of ours was at a meeting of Christian workers. He apologized for being late and quipped that he had been “out looking for gopher wood.” He was astounded that some, even in that group, didn’t get his joke.
It has been mostly dry here for a week now. The enormity of the rebuilding operations is sinking in. Numerous families in our Christian school have been affected. Many normal routes from point A to point B are closed because of washed out roads and bridges. Construction is expected to take months– and winter is coming. It can take two to three times as long to reach necessary destinations as before the flood. Long lines of cars and trucks creep along because open routes are full and there are no alternatives. One of the families in our church is still without sewer service. Another close farmer friend lost his entire crop for the year. Our sons who work in law enforcement have been working overtime. Life is not really “normal” for anyone. We all feel a little unsettled.
I wanted to write all of that as a physical record of a physical event, but now I want to reflect on it spiritually.
I wrote in Part 1, “I cannot help but think that what we need is not just a shower of blessing; we need a gusher, a flood of God’s pure water washing and cleansing. We don’t need pleasant sprinkles from a garden hose; we need something Noahic.” God did, indeed, send us something Noahic physically, and we have experienced first hand what that is like physically. But what would it be like if He sent us a Noahic Revival flood?
Here are some analogical comparisons:
1) Spiritually parched ground could only absorb so much; there would be a lot of run-off. We would perhaps despair at how little of the water of the Word would “soak in.”
“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Matthew 24:38-39
2) Muck and mire would be exposed and brought to the surface by the run-off. It would flow into places it hadn’t been before, where it would need to be cleaned out. But at least people would see it for what it is.
You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence. Psalm 90:8
3) Old familiar structures would be destroyed. Some of these structures would be of a type that we would say, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” But other destroyed structures would be ones that we would mourn the passing of– comfortable places, places of pleasure and leisure, places of convenience.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. James 4:8-10
4) Old familiar pathways would be destroyed. We would no longer be able to follow an old route unthinkingly. We would have to look for new paths through life and evaluate whether our destinations were worthwhile or necessary destinations.
The scorched land will become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, its resting place, grass becomes reeds and rushes. A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, but it will be for him who walks that way, and fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go up on it; these will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the LORD will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Isaiah 35-7-10
5) We would be motivated to reach out to friends and neighbors who were devastated by the flood waters of revival. We would need to provide spiritual hope to those who had experienced upheaval of their old ways of life.
Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched; my eyes fail while I wait for my God. Psalm 69:1-3
6) Our priorities would be changed. We would be thankful for God’s provision of spiritual life and breath, and be content with His gracious provision of spiritual food and covering. We would be less dependent on our human institutions, and be more thankful for the hand of God.
“Who has cleft a channel for the flood, or a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout? Job 38:25-27
I pray for those who have been unalterably affected by the floods in Colorado. But more than that, I continue to pray that God will send a flood of revival waters to our state as momentous as the gusher that came down our mountains and filled our valleys. We can never have enough of His living waters.
The LORD sat as King at the flood;
Yes, the LORD sits as King forever.
The LORD will give strength to His people;
The LORD will bless His people with peace. Psalm 29:10-11
