An unlimited supply
Rainy season in the Nahuatl village is over now. Once again water is a precious commodity.
A few weeks ago, missionary Katie Moore was filling a bucket from the holding tank that catches rainwater from her roof.
While waiting for it to fill, Katie’s language helper came to study. They visited while they waited for the container to fill.
One thing led to another and they decided to go in the house and make some recordings. After their session, Katie worked out and took a shower.
Then she hurried off to her co-worker’s home where she had been invited for dinner. After the fellowship over dinner, they had prayer together.
And then, Katie says, she abruptly remembered--the hose!
She ran back to her house and her flashlight confirmed it—the holding tank stood empty. “I had spilled 300 gallons of precious rainwater all over the dry ground,” Katie laments.
“Although my team members were very gracious about it, offering to help me get more water to fill the tank, I was angry,” Katie shares. In fact, she says she was “disproportionately angry.”
She stood in the dark next to the tank and wept. And she prayed, “This is how I feel, Lord—empty.”
As Katie laid on her cot in the dark, she remembered a similar experience from her childhood. She had once put a hose in a washing machine to help it fill more quickly and when she went to visit with a friend, she got distracted and forgot the running hose. When she returned, a river of water was flowing down the hill by their home.
“How did I react then?” Katie asks. “I was just thankful that the water ran out the door instead of flooding the house.”
Katie pondered her reactions in the two hose incidents and a realization hit her—the difference was all about the source of the water. The hose from her childhood was hooked up to a river—it was a source without limits. The hose coming from her roof in the village was hooked up to a holding tank, a source with a dwindling supply.
A deeper application began to emerge in Katie’s heart. She realized that her attitude toward the water supply was an illustration some of her attitudes toward the village people she ministers to.
“I’ve only got so much patience, and that’s it. The next person who comes to me is going to get the real me—the irritable, tired, real me. I can only be generous one more time today, then I’m done. I’m about running on empty,” Katie explains.
Thinking on this, she pondered God’s unlimited patience and generosity and God’s Spirit spoke to her heart, “You have a limited supply whenever the strength is coming from yourself.”
Katie shares that when she remembers that she is connected to Him, she can draw upon His limitless resources. “When we remember that, we are not stingy with others because we know that what we give will never run out. We open the hose and let it run, with joy, over the dry and weary land where there is no water.”
And there is something else to rejoice in, Katie shares.
Since then, it has rained. And the holding tank on the roof is now full.