As Real as Water in Our Hands

I don't think I'm alone in saying I remember nothing from the movie The Miracle Worker but the water scene. It's a breakthrough moment, the one we've all been awaiting. Helen Keller (actress Patty Duke) first realizes the word she is signing, water, identifies the liquid she is actually feeling coming from the pump; water is a thing itself, and the letters, w-a-t-e-r, identify that thing.

In the upcoming year, my plan is to revisit my old journals, to begin reading through them a little each day. I know I will find pain there. I know I will find history. I know I will find an emergence of illumination and commitment. What I will find most disturbing --and I know I will find it, because I know me --I will find the same things written again and again. I will find these AHA! moments, when the light finally dawns, when the water becomes a real thing to me, and I will find them --the same ones --again and again. What a merciful God, who has taken me over the same ground again and again that I might be changed! BUT why, if I am who I claim to be, if I love as I say I do, should He have to do so? Did Helen Keller have to be taught again and again the substance of water? Did she require Anne Sullivan to place her hand under the spout day after day, signing the letters, w-a-t-e-r over and over? The breakthrough had come, and from that moment on, Helen Keller knew what water was. When she signed the letters, w-a-t-e-r, she wasn't asking to go outside; she wasn't identifying a sound in the woods; Helen Keller knew what water wasn't. From that instance, truth, reality, identity was fixed in the mind of a deaf and blind woman. For life! Oh, that I could say the same! But breakthrough with regard to spiritual things in a temporal place, seems to come and go as quickly as a paycheck. Again, and again, and again, God imparts truth to us in various ways. A sermon, the Holy Spirit's move as we read the Scriptures, an object lesson, the passing words of someone in the feed store, the smell of honeysuckle in early Summer --so many ways He presents truth to us, giving us opportunity after opportunity to make truth as real to us as water in the hands of Helen Keller. And yet, we treat those lessons so casually. 

What would happen if God stopped? What would happen if He withdrew the work of His Holy Spirit in our lives, cancelled class for the day or the week or the rest of time? The assurance that He will teach and remain with His children does not give us license to undervalue or abuse the gifts He gives. Just as Paul could not stomach the idea that grace provides license that sin might abound, our Lord's Holy Spirit with us should never be taken for granted nor should we put off for another day what His Word instructs us to observe today. The moments we have with our Lord are precious. Eternity does not make them any less timely or costly. His mercies, while new in abundance each day, are not redundant or disposable. We are privileged to be mentored and accompanied by our King's very presence. Let us treasure His lessons as water to a parched land. Let us not merely study to know or consume, but to hold fast, to demonstrate ourselves as abiding in the way to which we have been saved. Let us appreciate those AHA! moments when we are given them but routinely receive His instruction with intention and all due diligence.