The Sprinkler of Grace

“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” — Psalm 42:1

It was later in the day when I arrived home from work and noticed brown spots beginning to appear in the grass.

It is late summer, so I suppose that is to be expected. The yard had stayed surprisingly green for most of the summer, but it had been hot for several days, and we had not had rain lately.

The heat was beginning to take its toll.

The yard needed water.

So I dragged out the sprinkler, as I often do, carried it to the middle of the yard, connected the hose, and turned it on.

It is one of those sprinklers that moves back and forth, sending an arc of water cascading across the lawn.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

There is something almost hypnotic about it.

I sat in a chair in the driveway with a book and listened. As the sprinkler moved toward me, the sound of the water grew louder. Then, as it turned and moved in the other direction, the sound gradually faded away.

A few moments later, it returned.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

I had positioned the sprinkler carefully, trying to make sure the water reached all those brown patches where the grass was beginning to wither beneath the late-summer sun.

The places that needed the water most were some of the hardest places to reach.

So I kept watching, hoping the water would make it all the way to the edges.

And somewhere in the rhythm of that sprinkler, I began thinking about grace.

We Have Brown Patches Too

Our lives have brown patches.

There are places in us that become dry. Places where we are wearing thin. Places where something that once seemed alive and green begins to wilt.

Grief can do that.

So can sorrow.

Uncertainty. Fear. Disappointment. Loneliness.

There are seasons when something within us seems to be drying up, when we lose some of our energy, joy, or hope. Sometimes we may not even recognize how thirsty we have become until we notice the brown patches appearing.

The psalmist understood that kind of thirst:

“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”

There are places within us that simply need the water of God’s presence.

And as I watched that sprinkler, I thought about how God somehow knows exactly where those places are.

God knows where to put the sprinkler in the lawn of our lives.

God knows where we are driest.

God knows where life has become brittle.

God knows the places nobody else can see—the grief we carry quietly, the fears we rarely speak aloud, the loneliness we have learned to disguise, the disappointments we keep to ourselves.

And somehow God’s mercy keeps reaching toward those places.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Grace upon grace.

Grace Reaches the Dry Places

Paul heard the Lord say to him, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Perhaps that is one of the great promises of our faith. God’s grace does not merely reach the parts of our lives that are already green and growing.

Grace reaches toward the brown patches.

Toward the places that need it most.

And maybe that is part of what the cross is all about.

At just the right time, God sent his Son into the world. In Jesus Christ, God placed the cross right in the middle of our brokenness so that mercy and grace could reach into the driest places of human existence.

Into suffering.

Into sin.

Into loneliness.

Into grief.

Even into death.

And from the cross comes the promise that death does not have the final word.

Life can emerge from places that looked dead.

Hope can grow where despair had taken root.

What has withered can live again.

Raindrops of mercy.

Raindrops of grace.

Falling upon the driest places of our lives.

Grace Is Still Reaching

The sprinkler is still going as I write this.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Steadily doing its work.

And so is the grace of God.

Still reaching.

Still refreshing.

Still renewing.

Still bringing life to places we thought might never be green again.

God’s grace does not falter.

God’s mercy does not run dry.

And perhaps today, somewhere in the lawn of your life, there is a brown patch that desperately needs the water.

Take heart.

God knows exactly where it is.

And grace is already reaching toward it.