Tiny Devotional for Monday, 10/05/2020

A great good morning to you, Internet friends and neighbors, and I hope it is as lovely for you, as it is here in the north Georgia piedmont! And to those family members who have happened on to this post, take it easy today; it's another Monday, and you know how those can go.

Drink water from your own cistern
And fresh water from your own well.
Proverbs 5: 15, NASB

An ancient cistern
 

1973; 5th General Hospital in Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt, West Germany:
Gary didn’t want to take his medication.

In those days, in that place, the common barracks drug was hash, smoked communally in a pipe. Lots of transfer of saliva; hence, lots of opportunity for hepatitis to spread.
That's what Gary was hospitalized with. He had some mental stuff going on, as well, and in his disturbed condition, he picked up the Gideon Bible by his bed, and started underlining passages, trying to find truth and peace. Proverbs 5:15 was one of those verses.

Gary took it to mean that he couldn't take his medication. You see, he was only supposed to drink water from his own cistern! Get it? Not the stuff the medic brought him. Nope. Gary knew: he HAD to have water from his own cistern! (The fact that he didn’t HAVE a cistern was irrelevant.)

Having exhausted his medical and military options, the corpsman who had Gary’s case decided to grab a convenient Christian believer (me), hoping I could convince him to take his medication. 
It didn't work; Gary and I finished our conversation by yelling insults at each other.

A serious student of Proverbs 5 will see that it's really talking about being faithful to your spouse, not where you get your H2O from. And poor, sick Gary just didn't get it; he was CONVINCED he must take it literally, because he was afraid of going to Hell. He wanted to be safe! Nothing I said would persuade him differently.

Gary needed water, for sure, but what he needed was Living Water. I wasn't able to point him to it back then; I hope he found it, or it found him, at some later point along his journey. 

And I hope that today, you and I will drink of the Living Water, all day long, and never thirst again.

Peace be on your household.

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