Keep Standing

Is the Lord among us or not? Exodus 17:7 When I was a little girl, my parents taught me many lessons around being aware of the blessings in my life and being thankful for them. As Depression-era children, both my parents were careful to conserve all good gifts----including those very precious gifts such as water, food, electricity and shelter. In particular, I can hear them saying: "Please don't leave the water running!"---no matter if that water were from the garden hose, the bathtub, or the kitchen sink. In Japan, water is a mixed blessing. Water can be the destructive force as well as the very essence of life. When the radiation from the damaged nuclear power plants began to affect Toyko's water supply, it all became more real. What would it be if we did not have easy, indeed bounteous, access to water? How would we live differently? Would our sense of thankfulness change? Would we feel like giving up? Would we work together or grow further apart? The Japanese, for the most part, have banded together. Our past Sunday lectionary illustrated the repeated inability of the Israelites to band together and be positive in their wilderness wanderings. When we feel that God might be absent, we humans often move further apart. Back in Japan, where the Japanese peoples' legendary endurance is in full display, a curious thing happens every night in shelters in northeastern Japan. When everything has quieted down and most are sleeping on their mats, lone figures gather at the space heaters interspersed throughout the shelter. Yukiko Yamaguchi, 73 uears old, lost her home in the tsunami. She is one of those who can't sleep and so search out warmth and surely companionship in the middle of the night. Somehow, through this early hour gathering, she feels she can stand one more day. (See Cover story in the New York Times, Saturday, March 26, 2011) Perhaps this is what drew the Samaritan woman to the well----not in the middle of the night---but in the middle of the day. A thirst for water, but perhaps a longing for something more. A longing to know if there was a God in her life of ruined relationships. Perhaps she woke up that morning--like so many days---wanting to give up. But something inside her made her get out of bed and try once more. And so she comes to the well in the heat of the day, hoping for her thirst to be quenched but also her soul to be soothed. And that day there was a man at the well, a Jewish man, a man called Jesus. He asks her for a drink---she responds. And a whole world of God's healing opens up for her in that moment. Because that day she chose to keep going. In an effort to still stand strong against the storms of life, she gained much, much more. As Jospeph Marshall says in his book "Keep Going: The Art of Perservering," : Standing up to the storm, no matter how many times it blows us down, should teach us that we don't need to be as powerful as the storm to defy it. We only need to be strong enought to stand." Some days we stand and we make it through another day. Some days we stand and we meet Jesus. And the world opens up larger and more joyous than we could ever have imagined. And we know the Lord is among us.