day four: h2o

Water. One of the most common, basic, fundamental substances on the earth. And if food is a primary resource for human life, water is an absolute necessity. A person can go a couple weeks without food, but only a day or two without water.

Today's adventure was handing out bottles of water to runners, walkers, and cyclists along the Swamp Rabbit Trail, a greenway that runs from just above Travelers Rest to just below Cleveland Park in Greenville. We walked for an hour and a half on the trail and around the lake at Furman University (map C on the link above) and handed out bottles of water to people we passed.

The pack of 35 water bottles only cost $3.98 (Thank you, Costco!), and it gave us a great opportunity to take the dogs and baby for a walk on the trail, not to mention a reason to talk to people. In fact, we want to do it again, and not even as a part of this Lenten experience...just to do it. (I think next time I'd like to hand out reusable water bottles so there's not so much waste. But that would cost waaaaaay more than $3.98.)

The most interesting part of our experience was people's reactions. It was like they couldn't believe that someone would give out water for no reason other than to give a drink to people who are thirsty. We got some strange looks and some "No thanks" laced with suspicion, but there were people who were pleasantly surprised and very grateful for cool drink.

Suzy and I debated whether or not we would take a bottle of water from someone offering it on the trail, and we both said that we would probably be a little wary ourselves. But what does it say about us when we're suspicious of others' good deeds, or shocked by a simple act of kindness, or surprised by someone's generosity?

I'm sure some would say that I should have "witnessed" to the people we encountered, that we should have given them the water and quoted some scripture:

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14)

Then again, Jesus didn't always go around preaching to people. He met them where they were, in daily interactions. Even in the passage above, he strikes up a conversation with this woman at the well because he stopped there to rest and asked her for a drink of water.

Maybe I should have said something about my role as a minister or my church or my faith or something. I don't even know if I could have if I wanted to, though. Many of the people we saw were running or cycling past us so quickly we barely had time to even offer them the water. And that's often how life is: it moves so quickly that we rarely get the opportunity to slow down, have a conversation, and potentially share something about our faith.

Don't get me wrong: we can and should be intentional about creating those opportunities and making that time. But we should also look for ways to let our faith speak through our actions. Do we really think that God can speak only through the words of our mouths? Maybe God can speak to someone even through the most common, basic, fundamental necessity of life, given in a surprisingly simple act of kindness.