Dehydrated

 Every year in the month of July, our small community takes a week to celebrate its town.  It's a week full of parades, picnics, food trucks and venders selling their wares on the Museum Lawn.  Alumni who graduated from our High School return and reconnect with old friends, and it's a time when families can come out and play family games and enjoy the benefits of small town living.

Our church kicks this week off by serving a free meal to those in our community to show them that we love and care for them.  We want to be a blessing to them and have the opportunity to tell them about our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was 100 degrees yesterday when we began to serve the meal, and in the heat, I lasted for about two hours.  I began to see black dots in front of my face.  I became overheated, dizzy and thought I was going to faint.  

Heat exhaustion.

I had never experienced anything like it before.  My husband ended up having to bring me home so that I could cool down and rest.  As I began to rehydrate myself, I remembered Psalm 42:1

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." 

Albert Barnes explains that "in the hot and dry regions of the Middle East, deer would often experience an intense physical thirst when pursued by hunters or suffering from drought.  These deer would desperately seek out water brooks to survive.  And just as deer pants for physical water, the psalmist's soul is driven by an all-consuming, desperate need for the presence and comfort of God."  In context, Albert Barnes notes, "This craving often peaks during deep affliction or when a person is separated from God's sanctuary. The psalmist-cut off from public worship and surrounded by enemies mocking his faith-finds that only God can satisfy his soul's profound thirst."  

"Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag." Spurgeon

Then I thought about Psalm 19:7

"The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple." I love this verse.  According to David Guzik, God's law lacks no essential ingredient to guide, correct and instruct us.  The word converting is actually a Hebrew word that means to restore, revive or bring back.  God's Word doesn't just improve us; it completely revives our innermost being.  God's Word is completely reliable and unchanging. God's Word provides the ultimate foundation of practical wisdom and discernment to protect the vulnerable.  Literally, God's Word is like a cool spring bringing life to a weary soul.

Just as water refreshes our physical bodies, the Word of God refreshes our soul.  

Isn't that beautiful?

When we neglect the refreshing Word of God, we can become dizzy, disoriented, and dehydrated by the stresses of the world...

        But when we daily replenish ourselves in God's Word, we can be refreshed...

            But that's just me!

On a side note: I found two examples of actual heat exhaustion in the bible and I will let you check them out for yourselves.  

2 Kings 4:18-20

Jonah 4:8

There is also two comforting verses that promise God's physical and spiritual protection in Psalm 121:5-6: "The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night."