Lessons from a Rain Tank
It’s the rainy season here in Papua New Guinea. Most afternoons are filled with torrential rains that go straight through until the early hours of morning, from October or November until May or June. So, I was steadily chugging away with lavish dish rinsing, normal loads of laundry, and copious amounts of cooking and drinking water. Until, one fateful Friday afternoon, I turned on the faucet to prep things for dinner and was met with a cough, a splutter and spitting brown water. The water pump ran and ran and seemed to be struggling. It had to either be the water pump or my rain tank. I ran out to the rain tank and knocked in its sides. Sure enough, it resounded hollow and empty right down to its base. It was the rain tank. Empty. I was stuck, boiling and filtering every drop of water, from brushing my teeth to rinsing my dishes, and everything in between.
For.
Three.
Long.
Weeks.
my water for a few weeks. It was grey or brown most of the time.
You’re probably wondering what happened. I was pretty sure I knew. A friend of mine brought his ladder and climbed up to the top of my rain tank (which is about 10 feet high) and discovered, as I suspected, that the small intake rain tank debris screen was completely clogged, as was one of the pipes coming from my gutters to the tank. I had thought I was fine because I saw water overflowing from the top of my tank just a week or so before. However, when my friend delivered this news about the screen I realized that it had been overflowing from the clogged rain tank debris screen, not from the overflow outlet on the opposite side of the tank. He cleaned both out and then I started the long wait. Over the next few weeks I had plenty of time to consider the physical and spiritual implications of this “adventure” as I gazed down into gray and brown bubbling pans of unappetizing water as they boiled for the requisite 10 minutes each time. For one, I realized I needed to make a plan and make it a priority to clean my gutters and check that filter at least once a month to prevent this from happening again.
But I also realized that God was using it to teach me a really important spiritual lesson. Spiritually, I can be a lot like my rain tank. I can appear like I’m full, or even have the appearance of occasionally overflowing when I am in fact slowly going empty. All too often things are blocking that all important living water from getting into my spiritual “tank” to fill it up. I can look like I’m full, but all sorts of debris can be blocking the flow of God’s presence and work in my life. Things like social media, busyness, friends, media, books, work, sports,…. The list goes on. But spiritual maintenance is important. If I’m not intentionally maintaining and clearing those things away, the living water will never get down into my soul where I need it most. I have to make it a priority to clear away distracting things from my life, and make room for the Trinity and His sustaining presence on a regular basis or I will go dry way faster than I ever think is possible.
If I continue to try to pour out without first doing that maintenance, all I’ll have to offer anyone is the coughing, spluttering, brown gunk that is the sediment left at the bottom of my spiritual tank. Once I realize that’s what’s going on in my spiritual life, I’ll have to work overtime to prep and filter all that’s coming out of my life until I can get my spiritual levels back up where I need them, and even then, what I will have to offer will be unappetizing and small in comparison to what I could offer normally. The better thing, I realized through all of this, is to maintain both my physical filter on my rain tank, but also the spiritual one governing the flow of God’s living water into my life so that I can pour out lavishly to others, not from what I hoarded, but from the overflow of God’s presence and work in me.
About three and a half grueling weeks into switching the house to river water, boiling and filtering every drop, and praying for rain, I was overjoyed one afternoon, when, after a particularly long dry spell for the rainy season, I heard the telltale sounds of rain moving down the valley. I rushed to the window and felt the wind slap me as it ran in front of the wall of rain. I could see the steely gray curtain rushing forward and I laughed. Water came in a mighty deluge and in one afternoon and evening of rain a third of my tank was full again. Two more heavy rains brought it to half and by the end of the week I was able to switch back to using the water from the rain tank for dishes and cooking and laundry and brushing my teeth. Never had I been so grateful for rain, and never will I forget the lesson of the rain tank.
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