Flooding

Thursday we had the pleasure of waking up to a downpour and thunderstorm (when I say "waking up to", I really mean "woken up by around 5:45am"). In addition to that I was lucky enough to see the water start to gather in my backyard as well as on the sides of the house.

I have the pleasure of living in a part of town that floods quite often. There's a park near my house at the bottom of the hill, it's now a lake. The roads had water gathering on them and I'm guessing some will be closed by the time I have to go home. That's part of the fun of where I live, there is limestone just a few feet under the earth so any water that falls has no place to go. It will just sit and rise.

There are many floods mentioned in the Bible (one that is now a major motion picture, and from what I hear, the flood is the only part of the story they got right), and the word is almost always used in a scary way. Once in a while a translation will say a room was flooded with light. Other than that, flooding always means death and destruction. One of the most popular flood mentioned is the Nile river, which floods every year. Sometimes it's even mentioned as an example of an army attacking, like the Nile flooding over the land.

But there's one verse that's different:

And the waters of the Nile will fail to rise and flood the fields; the ditches will be parched and dry, their channels fouled with rotting reeds. All green things along the riverbank will wither and blow away. All crops will perish; everything will die. The fishermen will weep for lack of work; those who fish with hooks and those who use the nets will all be unemployed. The weavers will have no flax or cotton, for the crops will fail. Great men and small—all will be crushed and broken. ~ Isaiah 19:5-10 (LB)

Sometimes flooding is necessary. I have been to an area of the Mississippi that floods every year, and that flood deposits moisture rich silt and nutrients for miles and miles allowing crops to grow. The destruction that comes in the spring is crucial to the food and crops in the fall. Without devastating floods, many peoples of the world would starve.

Next time life seems like it's flooding all around you and you're to the brink of drowning, realize this may be necessary to fertilize something amazing in your future. It's horrible to be in the flood, but what the flood produces later could be amazing and bountiful.

T