“Ask God to give you a small taste of what they are experiencing,” I said. “Then you won’t be able to forget.”

It seems that God misheard our conversation, because a week later I turned on my kitchen faucet only to hear it groan and sputter. I cringed at the advice I’d been so quick to offer. “God,” I said, “I think Amber was the one asking about how to pray. Perhaps you could contact her instead?”

Downstairs, plumbers were replacing our building’s horizontal pipes. That first morning, I tried to make the best of things. I skipped my shower, put the laundry off for one more day and planned to make something waterless in the crock-pot for dinner.

But all day long, I kept circling back to the sink. I couldn’t wash my hands, make coffee or flush the toilet. I thanked God for wet wipes, but felt edgy anyway. When was the water going to come back on? A steady trickle of friends arrived, dirtying dishes that I could not clean, and asking to use the toilet I could not flush. My dog Freda pouted by her water bowl, until I poured Evian into it, which she eyed with suspicion. She looked up at me as if to say, “Can’t you do better than this?’

A week later, the pipe project inches along and we continue to be without water for most of the day. It comes back on at random times each night. I’m struggling to let this temporary inconvenience remind me to pray for those who are thirsting now — for clean water, for shelter, for food. I’ve also had a few thoughts about water.

Life and Death
We can’t nurture or sustain life without water. Farmers and nursing mothers long for it. Deer pant for it, fish can’t survive a moment without it and every creature depends upon it for survival. Water marks our entry into this world, and while we can survive as much as three weeks without food, take away water and we’ll barely last three days.

My most profound experience with water occurred just before my daughter’s birth. I was 10 days past due and huge with child. My midwife just had to apply slight pressure and water came pouring out of me, spilling all over the table and the floor. I looked down at the gush of water. This is life, I thought.

Yet water brings life and death in turns. On January 9, 2005, The New York Times published an article featuring a Sri Lankan blind man, Lal Karunamuni, who lived within earshot of the sea. He was walking toward the Tsunami when a cousin spotted him, yelled for him to stop and dragged him to safety. Mr. Karunamuni, who plans to return to his seaside home as soon as it is habitable, describes the ocean as “A very dangerous bugger.”

The Bible echoes his sentiment: water may be necessary, but it is by no means safe. “It is the mysterious depth which kills and annihilates,” wrote theologian Father Alexander Schememann, “... the very image of the irrational, uncontrollable, elemental in the world.”¹

Every news story about the Tsunami struck fresh terror in me, particularly the stories of children being swept out of their parent’s arms. Those who survived did so by clinging to cashew trees, or to anything solid, as the water swelled around them. But children were too weak to hold on, and the sea swallowed them in disproportionately large numbers. While watching the coverage of the Tsunami, I struggled to cling to my belief in a loving God against waves of seemingly contrary evidence.

In the weeks following the Tsunami, people of every religion were united by a single question: “How could God allow such a thing?” Some have offered their opinions, but as Christians, we have something better than opinions to offer, something directly related to water: our tears.

The Gift of Tears
From about the fourth century onward, Christians wrote about “the gift of tears,” a prayerful weeping for our own sins and for the suffering of others, which Martin Luther later described as “heart water.”

In the wake of the Tsunami we can weep before God, praying for (and with) those who have been hurt. While we do need to respond with our pocketbooks and prayers, we must also respond with the deepest part of our hearts — mourning with those who mourn as we have been called to do.

I was staying with my parents when the Tsunami struck, and the night afterward, I couldn’t sleep. I wandered restlessly around the house. I ran into my pajama-clad dad in the hallway. “What are you doing up?” He said. “I was worried about the Tsunami,” I said. He looked at me a moment. “Don’t worry,” he said, “Pray.” Then he held me a moment. “About a third of the deaths were children,” he said, his voice breaking.

Tears can bring us closer to Christ, who wasn’t afraid to weep. I knew a man, named John Bills, who worked with men dying of AIDS. Bills said that after one of these men died, he fell down on the floor sobbing, asking God, “How could you let this happen?”

He heard God say, “Now you know how I feel.” Bills said, “The more your heart is broken, the closer you will be to the heart of God.”

A Final Blessing
Nobody wants to have their heart broken, nor do many people relish the experience of not having water on a snowy January day. But both of these things can awaken us to the suffering of others.

When the pipe work began in our building, I didn’t feel like praying. I was edgy and distracted, so overwhelmed with the work of trying to take care of my family and friends without water that I forgot what day it was.

That evening, my husband John, an Orthodox priest, came home from church with a small flask of water tucked in his pocket. It was Theophany, the celebration of Christ’s baptism. In church, we read 13 Old Testament readings, all about water — then we bless water, pouring it into little jars so that the blessing can spill over into our homes.

That night, John walked from room to room, sprinkling and singing, Anna and I in tow. The dishes were still piled by the sink, dirty laundry still heaped in the closet and the three of us were undeniably grimy. But in spite of all that was unfixable and unclean, grace seeped in — a watery reply to an accidental prayer.

Copyright © 2005 Jenny Schroedel. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.