You think of water when the well is empty. Ethiopia<\/p>\n
Good Monday Morning to this week 47 of 2019<\/p>\n
Drink water from your own cistern and freshwater from your own well. Proverbs 5:15<\/p>\n
Cape Town is a city of more than 3 million,\u00a0 suffered from drought for three successive years, which led to extensive water shortage. In February 2018 they got the shocking news of a possible \u201cday zero\u201d due in April 2018,\u00a0 if the people did not implement water-saving actions, with a maximum use of 50 liters of water per capita per day. In European countries, the estimated water usage is between 130-160 liters per capita per day.<\/p>\n
Environmental psychology is a relatively new, however a growing branch of psychology. Many of the questions that arise here can be explored and understood within popular and valid frameworks, from social, cognitive or biological models. The term \u2018coping\u2019\u00a0 indicates the psychological and physiological condition where an organism or person is expected to master and adapt to a stress-inducing\/evoking challenge. Coping can be understood as a positive expectation of a situation. Two possible consequences of not coping are – hopelessness and helplessness.<\/p>\n
Not just our environmental well runs dry, often also our physical or spiritual wells
\n\u201cMy soul is greatly troubled. But You O Lord – how long? says David in Psalm 6:3.<\/p>\n
In the frailty of our souls, even prayer is hard at such times.\u00a0 We can’t just replace the dryness of our souls with prayer as good as it is!\u00a0 One of the difficulties in prayer is that it doesn’t stem from what we do, but from what God does.<\/p>\n
In our spiritual life, with intense soulsearching and prayer, there are times that even then God seems to take a step back from us. Why do our prayers find no answers? We hear no whispering of his voice or indication that He is close or within reach. We are left feeling alone, isolated, confused and perhaps angry. Of course from good teaching we know that God is within us – never to depart. He will never leave us or forsake us! We’ve got that part of theology engraved, yet the distance, the absence may only be a perception, while the struggle is genuine even if the distance is not.<\/p>\n
For some of us, there are clear responses to these situations. Pray more, pray harder, examine our inner life, look for personal mistakes and failures, learn new prayers, try new spiritual exercises, keep looking for hidden distance in us that concludes that we are being punished by God. With more and more religious effort, the distance doesn’t change but we ask more questions and even put God’s love and care into question.<\/p>\n
Did you ever ask God for unshakable faith and then he started to shake your faith?
\nBack to David in the Psalms, \u201cHow long O Lord?!\u201d Could the silence and stillness of God, be pathways on which our faith grows? Doesn’t our spirituality grow and increase by faith, is fueled by faith, so that these times of distance also become times of God’s mercy,\u00a0 strengthening a very part of us, in need of the fuel called; Faith?!<\/p>\n
Could the first part of filling the well, not be the rain, but the gentle soft precipitation of faith? As we physically wait for the first snow to fall this November in Switzerland, we go from a long month of heavy rain to the gentle reception of the precipitation of snow. Be it snow, drizzle, rain, the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and precipitates. Isn’t it so with faith, we saturate the spiritual atmosphere with faith? On the other hand, fog and mist are suspensions to precipitation, because the water vapor doesn’t condense sufficiently. Fog and mist could be mistrust, incertitude or confusion in regard to our spirituals lives.<\/p>\n
Back to lack of rain or the drought, Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that has been experimented for quite a while. It changes the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into the air which changes the microphysical process within the cloud. Evidentially cloud seeding was attempted during the 2008 Summer Olympics n Beijing to coax rain showers out of clouds before they reached the Olympic city in order to prevent rain during the opening and closing ceremonies. Do we also attempt spiritual cloud seeding, trying to force an outcome, especially in times when the well runs dry?<\/p>\n
What do we do to fill our well with? Do we try religious attempts to force it, like the physical attempt of cloud seeding? There are so many books, Internet sites, recommendations explaining what you need to do to fill that void, water your dry well with, sometimes even in “7 steps”. No, I won’t fall to the urge to do the same and give you these steps like with a quick fix.<\/p>\n
Let’s take another approach:<\/p>\n
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.
\nThey shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.
\nIt shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green;
\nin the year of drought, it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.
\nJeremiah 17.7-8<\/p>\n
My child, pay attention to what I say, listen carefully to my words.
\nDon\u2019t lose sight of them let them penetrate deep into your heart,
\nfor they bring life to those who find them and healing to their whole body.
\nGuard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life.
\nProverbs 4: 20-23<\/p>\n
Have you never heard?\u00a0<\/span>Have you understood?<\/span><\/span> Wishing you a blessed week as you think of the water while the well is not empty or as you wait in faith for a new filling of your well.<\/p>\n Philemon<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You think of water when the well is empty. Ethiopia Good Monday Morning to this week 47 of 2019 Drink water from your own cistern and freshwater from your own well. Proverbs 5:15 Cape Town is a city of more than 3 million,\u00a0 suffered from drought for three successive years, which led to extensive water … <\/p>\n
\nThe\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0is the everlasting God,\u00a0<\/span>the Creator of all the earth.<\/span><\/span>
\nHe never grows weak or weary.\u00a0<\/span>No one can measure the depths of his understanding.<\/span><\/span>
\nHe gives power to the weak\u00a0<\/span>and strength to the powerless.<\/span><\/span>
\nEven youths will become weak and tired,\u00a0<\/span>and young men will fall in exhaustion.<\/span><\/span>
\nBut those who trust in the\u00a0Lord<\/span>\u00a0will find new strength, t<\/span>hey will soar high on wings like eagles t<\/span><\/span>hey will run and not grow weary t<\/span>hey will walk and not faint. Isaiah 40: 28-31
\n<\/span><\/span>
\nIt\u2019s a time for faith, His well has not run dry, He is there!<\/p>\n