Blessings From Ditch Digging

Some days we are ditch diggers. But there are lessons and blessings to come…

Mama is hollering and yelling and needing dress changes twice. The carpet is stained and food is ground into it and the carpet shampooer is put to work again.

Then later in the evening I pull out Dad’s built-in bread board and find mice poo all over it!  (Thankfully he never uses that one, especially since he’s blind and wouldn’t see what he was putting his bread on.)

I could go on about the unpleasant things…but let’s not. Some days are just tough and dry and full of hard work.

Which reminds me of a Bible passage I read today. In 2 Kings 3, King Jehoshaphat was with two other kings in the wilderness on their way to fight an enemy with their troops. But they had no water for the army or the animals.

So the prophet Elisha gave them a message from the Lord, saying, “Make this valley full of ditches.” God said they wouldn’t see wind or rain, but He would fill the valley with water for them and their animals and give them victory over their enemies.

But to see the deliverance and the miracle, first they had to trust God and obey Him. They had to dig the ditches that He would fill. They had to do this hard work when they were already parched and the likelihood of water showing up without rain seemed unlikely, to say the least.

But the Bible says, “This is a simple matter in the sight of the Lord.” (2 Kings 3:18, NKJV)

When days are especially challenging and we feel like we’re sweating in the wilderness with no refreshing water in sight, we can trust God. We can know that meeting our needs is a simple matter for our Lord.

We can believe that obeying God and sweating through the hard work of the assignments He gives us, is actually carving depth in our lives for God to fill with His blessings and victories. 

We might be digging ditches today. But the water is coming.