A Dry and Thirsty Land

Elizabeth and I don’t spend a lot of time at church these days. When we stopped worshiping in person, we shut the boiler off at church to save on gas bills and let Community Kids, who were still using the church library as an office, use the church space heaters. That left our offices cold. Of course, we could easily have brought in other space heaters, but there were still the concerns with shared bathrooms. Plus, with our kids finishing up online school and needing increased attention and direction, it was simply easier to work from home.

We’ve still made regular trips to church, however. Sometimes to pick up a book. Or to bring something back to church that we no longer need at home. Sometimes to grab some tech equipment that will help with the next sermon recording or zoom worship service.

Occasionally when we get back to church, we have reason to go into the sanctuary. It’s eerie. It’s a moment frozen in time. As if everyone just up and left at a moment’s notice. It’s still sacred space, but it’s clear it hasn’t been occupied for some time. The decorations for Lent are still in place: purple banners, burlap sackcloth, the banners with handprints, dried plants. It feels a bit like a desert or a wilderness. My heart catches in my throat each time I walk through. I need to steel myself before entering.

What particularly gets me is the baptismal font. The bowl rests on purple burlap cloth, and in the bowl are three stones. Dry stones that would get drowned in abundant water every Sunday in our worship when we poured out the pitcher during the assurance that our sins are indeed forgiven. But now those stones have been dry for a long time. And there are calcium rings all the way down the side of the inside of that bowl. As if no one emptied the font the last time we poured water into it and everything has now dried up. A physical sign and seal that we are a dry and thirsty land longing for the waters of renewal.

For the last two months, I had been thinking of this image as a reminder of our longing to be able to worship together in person again. To gather together. As good as it’s been to experience community through zoom worship, and to rethink what’s important and what it means to be church, and to be able to connect with folks in new ways and across oceans, worshiping online is not how we were created to worship. We long with the Psalmist in Psalm 42 to be able to go to the house of the Lord again.

For the last two months, I had connected the image of the dried-up font with the effects of the coronavirus. With the uncertainty and tumultuousness of the world. With the longing for normalcy.

But now, in the last two weeks, with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, and then Breonna Taylor, and then George Floyd, and then with the protests and riots that are spreading through our nation and our world, and the deep lament that is taking hold within my heart, I’m seeing it more as a symbol not of something that has recently taken hold, but as something that has been true for a long time. We are a dry and thirsty land desperate for renewal, for life. The sin of racism has too long eaten away at our souls. Our inability and unwillingness as a nation to do the hard work necessary to dismantle racism—our unwillingness even to listen to those who are trying to tell the rest of us they can’t breathe—is tearing us apart. My heart cries out at my own complicity.

I balk at the work that lies ahead. At the colossal effort it will take from all of us just to make a little progress. But I know it is necessary. I’m not even entirely sure where to begin; I just know I have a lot to learn and it will be hard. I take hope in the words of Isaiah 44:3—and while they originally were written to a people returning from exile, surely they apply to us as well: “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”

There’s something strange about walking into the sanctuary at church these days. Almost a tangible feeling of lament. A deep longing for things to be different. A thirst for life and renewal.