Wells

On my great-grandmother's property was an old school water well, with the bucket on a rope and everything.  I remember two things about that well.  One we would threaten to push one another down it and two it smelled and tasted like blend of dirty sweat sock with hint of rotten eggs. Umm, deliteful!

But that well had a purpose.  It was many years after they lived on that property that running water was put into the house.  So that  well supplied water for drinking (if you could stomach it), for washing clothes, dishes and faces of 6 children. 

To me what is so interesting about a well is that it requires rain.  Rain is what feeds the supply of water that sits at the bottom of that long hole in the earth.  Those dark, ominous clouds hold the source of supply for that well.

Just this last weekend my three year old daughter sat on a blanket on a bleachers under an umbrella watching her two older brothers play baseball.  Eventually both games would be postponed due to, you guessed it, rain.  Rain was the spoiler of our great day at the ball park.  So often we curse the rain.  The rain wreaks havoc on our plans of fun in the sun. 

Rain is often the describing word we use for when life is not going the way we want.  "When it rains, it pours" to be precise is the words that often leave our mouths.  But when it rains it supplies, it fills the well.  So I have decided to dig a well in my life.  Knowing that three things in life are for certain: death, taxes and eventually it will rain.  I plan on taking life's rainy challenges, all it's falling precipitation and turning it into something useful. 

According to the country song, "rain is a good thing."  While Luke Bryan and I may agree our reasons vary greatly.  Rain in our life is our opportunity to grow, to learn, to become something  better and greater.  Jesus said this "the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous."  My plan is to dig a well and make something useful out of life's rain.