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Sandgrouse

by Esther Griggs

Inspiration for life can spring up anywhere, especially from the world of nature. I encountered one such inspiration very recently while watching a program called Planet Earth, dealing with grasslands specifically. The focus was on a bird which lays its eggs a long way from waterholes. The father travels up to 16 km in a day to get water for his chicks. When he arrives at the waterhole, he sits and rocks side to side and his feathers soak up the water. It takes him about 15 minutes and he can carry up to two tablespoons back to the nest. It sounds wonderful, sitting and soaking, but waterholes are dangerous places and there lurks the distraction of predators, badgering this hard working dad.

The chicks in the nest would not survive if the male did not return. Their existence depends on his fulfillment of this duty. It reminded me of the duty we have as Christians with the water of life. We need to sit and soak in God’s presence by reading His word, talking to Him in prayer, listening to worship music, and meeting with fellow Christians. It sounds wonderful, but all of life’s predators will come to distract and threaten that life instilling time.

There are people around us thirsty for life. Jesus in conversation with a woman, in a time when it was inappropriate; a Samaritan , deemed despised by her ethnicity; at a well where the thirsty come, explains that He could give her water that was living. It would be a thirst quenching water. It would be a fountain of water within her which would spring up into everlasting life. She went away from that waterhole refreshed, taking with her new life, that in turn refreshed and changed her village.

As Christians let us be faithful to drink from this water of life. We don’t know whose desert wanderings have left them cracked and dry. When in conversation, let our words be words of life, that can be used of God, to give life. Let’s be like the Sandgrouse, even though badgered, persists to drink, in order to touch a thirsty world with the life of God.

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