Follow the Water

“Follow the water.”

—My father

When I was little, my father taught me that if I were ever lost in the woods, I should follow the water.

“Water,” he would say, “will always lead you home.”

I later discovered he was right.

Only much later did I begin to see that those words reached farther than the woods.

——

A few days ago my granddaughters were playing outside with a small plastic tub filled with water.

They had colored it purple with food coloring and spent the better part of an hour happily stirring, pouring, and imagining.

When it was time to go inside, their mother asked them to empty the tub onto the driveway.

They tipped it over.

A wide rush of purple water spread across the concrete.

Then something unexpected happened.

Instead of continuing to flow across the driveway, every little stream slowly began changing direction. What had started as a broad sheet of water gradually gathered itself together until every drop was flowing through one tiny crack in the pavement.

Suddenly I heard excited voices.

“Grandma! Look! All the water is disappearing into this tiny crack!”

The girls hurried over and crouched beside it, completely fascinated.

“It was just everywhere,” one of them said. “Why is it all going into there?”

I smiled.

“What do you think?”

They watched quietly for another minute.

Then my oldest granddaughter looked up.

“I think it’s because… the crack is deeper.”

“Yes,” I said.

“So what does that tell us about water?”

She looked back down, watched the last little ribbon of purple disappear into the crack, and smiled.

“Water always finds the lowest place.”

Her words stayed with me long after the driveway had dried.

Not because they taught me something new about water.

They reminded me of something I had been pondering ever since writing Love Looks Behind.

In that reflection I wrote that love notices the one others overlook. The one at the back. The one left behind.

Standing there beside that little stream of purple water, another thought arrived.

Love doesn’t merely notice the lowest place. It flows there.

I sat with that thought for a long time.

Perhaps creation has been telling this story all along.

Scripture so often speaks of God through the language of water.

Jesus invited the thirsty to come to Him and drink. Then He said that whoever came to Him and drank would become a channel through which that same Living Water would flow.

Water always seeks the lowest place.

So does grace.

Christ did not remain in the highest place.

He came down.

Into our humanity.

Into our suffering.

Into our shame.

Into our grief.

Into our death.

The movement of divine love has always been downward.

Toward us.

Then I remembered something else.

The night before the Cross, Jesus poured water into a basin.

Of all the images He could have chosen, He chose water.

Then He knelt.

The water was simply doing what Love has always done.

Living Water was never meant to stop with us.

It was always meant to flow through us.

Toward every cracked place this world has forgotten.

Every lonely place.

Every wounded place.

Every thirsty heart.

Watching that broad sheet of purple water gather itself into one narrow stream, I couldn’t help but notice something else.

All those little streams became one.

Not by striving.

Not by competing.

Not by choosing their own direction.

They became one because they all yielded to the same downward pull.

Jesus said,

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me… out of his heart will flow rivers of Living Water.”

(John 7:37–38)

Living Water never ends with us.

It flows through us.

Carrying His life.

Carrying His mercy.

Carrying His Good News.

Like the purple water on my granddaughters’ driveway, it gathers itself toward every place made deep by sorrow.

Grace, like water, always finds the lowest place.

Follow the water.

——

© Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.