| | | JULY | 12 | SATURDAY
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| Drenched by God’s Abundant Water
You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water.
—Psalm 65:9
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| READ: Psalm 65:9-13
REFLECT: Though the memory is now over thirty years old, it holds a vivid place in my brain. Water is at the heart of the memory—lots and lots of water.
On that summer day, my cousin and I had spent the afternoon with our boyfriends (who later became our husbands) at the abandoned farm of our grandparents. We had walked a trail through the woods, nibbled berries, watched the river flow by from the porch of the farmhouse, and cooled off with a swim in that same river. It was a perfectly lovely, lazy day.
Then came the cloudburst. As the psalmist declares, “You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water. . . . You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth” (vv. 9-10). As only the young are enticed to do, we rushed out into the rain, laughing, hooting, and dancing as the walls of warm water poured over us, soaking us to the skin. Joy abounded.
The psalmist lives in a dry land, where water is a scarce and precious resource. Much of the year, the parched land is brown and appears lifeless. The psalmist captures well the joy of the people when the rains come to soften the land and bless its crops. The psalmist, too, points us to God, the source of the rain and all good things. May our gratitude for water turn us toward our good God.
— Melissa Miller
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| RESPOND: Today we receive the gift of water for drinking and cleansing. We give thanks for the sheer pleasure of water. In doing so, we confess our dependence on God.
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