digging a trench

In October 1991, when I was a member of a mission team that ministered in Dundee, Scotland, I stayed in the home of a young woman named Aileen, and we formed a fast friendship. The following year, Aileen came to Nashville for a visit, and she brought me a book that became one of my all-time favorites - The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass (Age 37 3/4). I now have ten books written by this Scottish Christian humorist, and I have read many of them multiple times.

Last Tuesday morning I heard water running in the house, yet no faucets or toilets or spigots were turned on. A visit from a plumber that afternoon confirmed my suspicion that the pipe running from the house to the meter had sprung a leak. The following day, two guys came and dug a trench in our yard and replaced the pipe. Four days later, we still have an open trench in our yard, because the guys can't fill it in until a codes inspector comes to check out their work.

As we pulled in the driveway early this afternoon after returning home from church and I once again gazed upon the trench, I suddenly recalled one of my favorite passages from a Plass book. In The Growing Up Pains of Adrian Plass, he describes an extraordinarily difficult period in his life that was marked by "manic highs and miserable lows." One Sunday during this period, Plass was sitting in church when an image came to the forefront of his mind that proved to have great significance for his future.

"A picture started to form in my mind of a huge lake surrounded by plots of land, each one occupied by a single person. Behind the plots that gave access to the lake were more plots, again occupied by individual people. As I explored the picture mentally, I saw that the lakeside dwellers were made up of two kinds of people. The first kind rushed to and fro from the edge of the lake to the boundary between their own plot and the one behind, carrying cups of water to their landlocked neighbours. Most of the water got spilled in the process, but they worked on frantically, doing their best. The other kind were not working frantically at all. They were simply digging steadily on their plots of land, with no apparent interest in the fate of the waterless tenants whose land adjoined theirs. One of the cup-carriers stopped, red-faced and breathless, and spoke with some annoyance to one of the diggers. 'Why don't you do as we do? Why don't you get a cup and carry water to those who have none? It is selfish to work only on your own land as you do.' The digger leaned on his spade for a moment and smiled. 'You don't understand,' he said, 'I'm digging a trench.'"

Digging trenches is tough, time-consuming work, but the labor pays off in the long run. Time and energy must be expended in your if you want to be a conduit of the Living Water that comes only from Christ.