Springs of Living Water

"He sends springs into the valleys which run among the hills."

This was a verse I read across this morning in Psalm 104:10, a favorite since I first saw it on a placemat purchased by my wife in our first home on Hillside Drive in Lexington, NC.

We had little other than each other and a home owned by Industrial Savings and Loan! As teachers just starting out, the home had cost more than our combined annual salaries, though far less than one of today's new automobiles!

I worked weekends loading trucks at Pilot Freight Lines in Kernersville, the job I had depended on since my sophomore year in college.

We had both come to Christ by way of crisis, still with few mentors as we were yet unchurched. LaDonna had purchased Bibles for each of us, the Living Bible. I still remember the green leather backs and the handwritten note inside the cover! My wife has always been a gift giver!

I had never seen the above verse, likely still yet as disciplined in my reading as I am today.

It just so happened that LaDonna had cobbled together sufficient funds to purchase table decorations, to include placemats. She had chosen vinyl mats with lush meadow-like photos embedded, each with a Bible verse in the upper corner.

We only had four chairs in the little dining nook of our tiny kitchen, however, only this one placemat caught my attention. I had been struggling with the faith thing, her life better moored than mine, having experienced catechism; a word I had never even heard.

We had begun our attempt at tithing, by then involved in various churches by way of an interdenominational prayer breakfast led by our school principal, Doug Elmore. Her childhood Lutheran faith required such.

I was just trying to believe God for energy to work sufficient to pay the bills, which at that time included a 1973 Pontiac Gran Prix that I had financed just before we were married! The car was not what impressed her, but rather the life changes that had begun occurred earlier that same year. The car payments, unlike some of my life habits, didn't end as quickly!

Car payment, house payment and tithe just about wiped us out each month. In fact, I remember well, the treat we would share each Friday as we split a hotdog special from a little drive-through joint just a few blocks from our new home. Two dogs and fries plus a large drink for 1.50!

Those were good days, not only because prices were so low, but the life lessons being learned, one of them generosity!

We soon discovered the Honey Monk, and upgraded to barbeque and hushpuppies!

Then after 17 years, we built our first new home shortly after my last graduate degree was earned, and our life accelerated!

God truly has been good to us, with "springs" pouring living water into the "valleys", at times deep ravines (NLT) which ran among the "hills" navigated, even steep mountains, all which we have together climbed!