Water: Cool and Fresh

Fichtner-MainwaringSprayPark1Oh what a relief it is!  The cooler weather and the nice rain has been a welcome relief from the scorching temperatures.

It’s been so hot and dry, my garden has been withering, and I’ve had water on my mind.  How often and how much should I water?

While I was trying to find the answers to my questions, I found that the average household uses about 408 gallons each day and about 148,920 gallons a year.

So how is this water being used?  Most of it goes down the drain through:

  • The toilet……………….26.7 %
  • The Clothes Washer…21.7 %
  • Showers & Baths…….16.9 %
  • Leaks……………………13.7 %
  • Kitchen use ……………10.7 %
  • Cleaning………………….5 %
  • Dishwasher ……………..1 %
  • Other ……………………..4.3 %

As I was thinking of this, I remembered a conversation that Jesus had with a woman at a well.  She had come in the heat of the day to draw water from the public well, and Jesus said to her: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

The water bill has already been paid, so come to Jesus and drink deeply.

Raw Emotion

Reading-facial-expressions_articleDo you remember the last time you did it?  Something happened and you let your guard down and the true you showed:  Your emotions were on display for everyone to see.

Immediately following His Passover entry into Jerusalem the emotions of Jesus were easily seen :  “When Jesus came closer and saw the city, He began to cry, and He said, If you had only known today what would bring you peace! But you cannot see it (Luke 19).”

In a moment, Jesus went from the joys of the palm branches to the tragic reality of what the future held.  In this incident, it’s easy to see His love in:

  • His walk of grace as He came near to the city
  • His eyes of love in the way He beheld the people
  • His heart of compassion as He wept due to the spiritual blindness of the people

Is it a comfort to you to know that the love, grace, and compassion of God is yours to claim?  It’s available to you because of who Jesus is and what He did.  Notice how this is explained in The Message:

Seeing that we have a great High Priest who has entered the inmost Heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to our faith. For we have no superhuman High Priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible—he himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that he never sinned. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with fullest confidence, that we may receive mercy for our failures and grace to help in the hour of need.      ~Hebrews 4:14-16