It was a cold, damp day, and the two women sat hunched over to keep themselves warm. Outside, winter was in the beginnings of its transition into spring. Dreary rain and frigid cold had been forecasted for the next week. The church currently met in an old gym, too big to heat. Scattered around the cleared church area sat several buckets, strategically placed to catch any rain that might fall through the holes in the zinc roof above. Annie shivered uncomfortably, looking around at the six unoccupied chairs of the circle.
She had just signed up to be a teacher's aid for the children's Sunday School class. She had not expected her first day as a helper to be devoid of children. She caught a flash of her reflection in one of the gym's full-length wall mirrors: a woman in her mid-fifties, with a pleasant face and smile. Her once-brown hair was beginning to streak with an early gray. Not that she minded. She rather liked the effect, and wore it proudly. She sighed, nevertheless. Maybe she was too old to be here, anyway. Lucia, the official teacher, was barely into her twenties. "Do you think anyone will come?" Annie asked.
Lucia looked up from her notebook full of hasty scribbles to the clock on the wall. "We still have five minutes." She scrunched her nose thoughtfully, then turned her attention back to her notes.
"What are you writing?"
"Questions."
"For what?"
"For the class. I thought of it just this morning." She pointed at a pile of paper circles and origami birds. "The children will find a piece of manna and a quail. Then they have to tell me the number on each of the objects. Each number has a question. If they answer the question right, they get a fruit." Here she pointed at a tray full of colorfully appetizing apples, bananas, and pears.
Despite her attempts to prevent it, Annie's jaw dropped open. "You thought of that this morning?" Lucia nodded, still concentrating on the questions. Annie shook her head in amazement. It would have taken her weeks to think of, plan out, and execute a creative class like that. Lucia could put it together in a matter of minutes. Chagrined, Annie looked again at the empty seats. Too bad no one is here to enjoy it. She noticed that Luci had stopped writing. "You done?"
"No, I need one more question."
"How about . . ." Annie glanced upward, trying to think of a clever question. "How many days could the Israelites keep the manna they collected?"
"Good one!" Lucia wrote it down quickly. "There." Setting the notebook down, she reached over to pick up the paper manna and quail. She walked to an open space and tossed the pieces around. "That ought to do it." She sat back down. "Now we wait."
Ten minutes into the class time, one girl walked to the children's area. Lucia and Annie greeted her enthusiastically. "Sienna! Welcome to class!"
A little embarrassed at having arrived so late, she apologized and sat down. "No one else is here?" she asked. The teachers shook their heads. "Oh."
Lucia pulled out Sienna's class book and handed it to her. "We'll go ahead and start. Would you mind turning to class four and reading today's story?"
Sienna opened her book and began the story. She read better than most of her classmates, in well-modulated tones, not stumbling once over any of the complicated words. Annie closed her eyes and listened to the 11-year-old's voice rise and fall in a pleasant story-time pattern. She ignored the cold and tried to picture, instead, a hot desert, a vast encampment of people, and a frustrated leader.
The people, hungry and disgruntled, murmured angrily against Moses. Had he brought them out of Egypt into the desert because the desolate dirt made better graves? They would die with nothing left by which to be remembered. Genocide. That's what it was. Moses was too friendly with those Egyptians. Raised by the princess herself, he was. He had probably planned this all along. A few (too few) voices reasoned with the murmuring. Don't you remember the Red Sea? The whole Egyptian army was drowned! They wouldn't listen.
But God is faithful, and kind. He had said He would take His people to the Promised Land, and He would do it. Despite their murmuring and their ingratitude, He would care for them. He sent to them bread from heaven in the morning. Light, honey-flavored, and delicious. When it fell, the Israelites asked, "Manna?" So it was called, "Manna," meaning "What is it?" In the evening, he sent them quail.
Annie's concentration was broken by a twisting in her stomach and a loud growl. Sienna glanced in her direction. Annie grinned sheepishly. "Quail are delicious. I'm getting hungry." A stirring of a memory came to her, something from her younger days. She had almost entirely forgotten about it, until today . . .
"God is faithful," said Lucia with conviction. "He provides us with what we need. He may not always give us what we want, but He takes care of our needs. Just like He took care of the Israelites in the desert, God will take care of us every day." She paused, looking at her one student. "Does that make sense?" The girl nodded. Lucia smiled. "Good, here's our activity for the day," and she explained the game. Sienna dutifully picked up her paper manna and quail, answered the questions, and picked up a shiny red apple. When she had reseated herself, Lucia instructed her to do the activity in the class book.
"Can I tell a story?" Annie interrupted gently.
Ever flexible, Lucia nodded. "Sure! Do tell."
"Once upon a time," Annie began, "there was a Tim and an Annie." Sienna tilted her head, curious. She knew Annie, but who was this Tim? Lost in memories, Annie stared up at the stained ceiling. "They were raising support to become missionaries to Germany. They would travel to different churches, telling them about their future plans, and asking the church to pray. They lived off of the money that churches gave to them. It was very little money, but always enough to attend to their needs and to keep food in the refrigerator. One month, their money ran out. And that same month, their food ran out, too."
Sienna stopped her fidgeting and sat still to look at her, eyes wide.
"The Sunday after their food ran out, they went to visit a church, like they always did. Just as they had always done before, they told the church about their future plans, and asked the church to pray for them. They didn't mention that they had no food. After the service, the people from the church pulled Tim and Annie aside and told them that they provided boxes of food for the poor. People who couldn't afford to buy groceries regularly would buy these boxes of food for a cheap price. 'You see,' they told Tim and Annie, 'we have a box left over. We want you to have it.' And they gave it to the young couple. They had food in their refrigerator when they thought they would have none."
"Wow!" breathed Sienna. "God really does provide."
"I have a story, too," said Lucia.
"Tell it!" Sienna and Annie encouraged.
"Once upon a time, there was a family that was very poor. The father worked hard every day to provide for his family, but it never seemed enough. One day, they ran out of food. They had no milk, no meat, no rice or beans, no noodles . . . not even coffee or tea. With all the bills paid, there was no money left over for food. The father, not wanting to worry his two daughters, told them nothing. He and his wife prayed together, laying the matter before God."
Sienna smiled delightedly. "I've heard this story," she whispered, but listened with renewed interest to it. It had a new, more enlightening, meaning to her today.
"That evening," finished Lucia, "the father's mother arrived with bags full of coffee, tea, sugar, flour, noodles, rice, beans, meat, and milk. Something had prompted her to buy these things for them, even if they weren't very much . . ." Lucia's eyes sparkled with tears. "It wasn't until years later that the daughters found out about that story. One of them still wonders how often that happened."
Sienna clapped her hands. "Thank-you for those stories, teachers. They were awesome." She picked up her pencil to finish the puzzle in the book.
Lucia looked at the girl, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Do you have a story, Sienna?"
The girl's hand paused, poised over the last question in the puzzle. A look of uncertainty crept over her features. After a long silence, she raised her face. "I do have a story." Carefully, she set the pencil down, laid her hands on her lap, and began her story.
"Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose mother sold used items at a market. Every day, the girl would return from school and her mother would give her a big, shiny apple. It was the girl's favorite after-school treat. One day, the girl came home, but her mother didn't have an apple for her. There wasn't enough money to buy apples. Actually, there wasn't enough money to buy much of anything. They would have to eat only salads for a while. Very sad, the girl went up to her room to do her homework. The little girl's mother began to cry. She cried softly because she didn't want the little girl to hear, but it didn't work. The girl hated to hear her mother cry, so she cried, too."
Watching Sienna speak with the gravity of an adult made Annie's heart ache. Her childhood years had certainly had their troubles, but she had never gone hungry. Sienna started at a spot on the dirty carpet in front of her and continued.
"That evening, the mother went outside to throw away the trash. Just beside her door, she saw a box full of shoes. They looked almost new. She looked around to see if someone had dropped it, but no one was around. The money that she made from selling those shoes was enough to buy them food for the rest of the week." Sienna gripped her dress, fighting back tears. "Also that week, the girl's father came to visit (her parents were separated). He brought apples."
The silence after Sienna's story pressed down on them heavily. Lucia broke it first. "That was a beautiful story. I bet the girl was grateful."
Sienna nodded.
Into this silence wandered one of the elders of the church. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but the Sunday School hour is over."
In the busy scuttle of cleaning up and heading toward the main service, Annie's thoughts got pushed back for later scrutiny. The service seemed long and incongruent with her driving message of the day. It was with great relief that she returned home and sought the comfortable safety of her couch. The screen saver on her computer showed the generic sample pictures, available on most PCs on the market. It switched from blooming flowers, to verdant fields, to springs tinted a celestial blue. Pictures of springtime.
Jehovah-jireh. God my provider. Like a plant trying oh-so-hard to break through the hard outer shell of the seed, one thought pushed past all the rest to the front of her mind. Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, oh you of little faith! Annie frowned. Luke, I think.
She stretched out to get her Bible, saw that it was not in its proper place and gave up. Where is my Bible, anyway? I'm pretty sure the passage is Luke. She laid her head back and closed her eyes to pursue this thought that so insistently begged for attention. Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Where was this thought going? Annie felt like she was snatching up fragments of a complete thought, but none of those fragments went together. Bothered, she opened her eyes again.
The screen saver had cycled back to the picture of the spring of water. She felt unexpectedly thirsty upon seeing it. Her spirit had run dry lately. It had been almost fifteen years now since she had returned to church and rededicated her life to Christ. Back then, she had attacked every challenge with revivified vigor and joy. After a three-year depression, the sense of joy had been almost intoxicating. She had felt undefeatable. Somehow, though, that wellspring slowly- almost imperceptibly at first- had run dry. She was walking through an unwelcoming desert, thirsty and dying. Worried about her waning desire to serve, she had joined a prayer group, a hospitality group, a service group, and the cleaning crew for the church. The problem was, she had nothing left to give.
From the corner of her eye, she spotted the edge of a book, pushed under the bookshelf. It looked suspiciously like her personal devotional Bible. Some years back, she had bought a King James Version Bible with wide margins. In it, she could write all the notes she wanted to. She couldn't remember the last time she had used it. Willing her tired body to get out of the deep couch, she retrieved the Bible out from under the bookshelf. When did it get under there? She brushed the clumps of hair, stray dust bunnies, and thick layer of dust. I'm guessing a while ago, she noted to herself with chagrin. She sat back down and leafed through the pages. Comments in all kinds of colors of pen ran across many of the pages. Her perusal stopped in the book of John, with Jesus at the well. A flabbergasted Samaritan woman queried the Messiah about this water that would allow her to never thirst again.
Annie had never tried to do any research on the subject of what, exactly, was this living water that Jesus had offered. The whole context seemed to be about water, in some form or another. John 3 talked about baptism, being born of water and the spirit. John 5 talked about healings at the pool of Bethesda. John 4 talked about this living water. Was it salvation? God's love? A smile stole across her face as her incomplete thoughts began to connect around a single idea: God's Word as the Living Water.
When she read the Bible's words, when she worked to memorize its verses, when she drank deeply of God's message- then she felt refreshed and joyful. The words that she committed to memory would always be there to comfort and revive her. She had been wandering her dusty desert with a canteen in hand! All she had to do was draw from it. God had provided her with a spring of water, and she had refused to visit it.
In her mind's eye, she saw the first few drops of rain begin to fall in her parched desert. It'll get muddy and messy, she thought glumly. Then she brightened. But I bet the oasis will turn out beautiful.
Outside, the weather did what it so very often does, and it shifted in the opposite direction as had been predicted. The rain clouds, squeezed of the last of their water, dissipated. The sun, unveiled at last, revealed to delighted eyes that flowers had begun to bloom. Spring, at last, had arrived.
