Homily

One of my favorite sections of vespers is when we sing Psalm 104 that praises God in the glory of His creation. "You cover the earth with the ocean like a garment...You send forth springs into the waterways that wind among the mountains, and give drink to every beast of the field until the wild asses quench their thirst...the earth is full of your creatures; the sea also, great and wide in which there are schools without number, living things both great and small."

The psalm writer speaks of the glory of creation and part of that glory is to be found in something that we all probably take for granted: water. There have been several times in the past where the water has been shut off at my house because of breaks in the water line that serve this part of Springfield. The longest time I was without running water was 2.5 days which is a very brief time, but it seemed like an eternity. And perhaps some of you can relate. I was made very aware of how much I take water and water delivery for granted. How many times, again and again, I would go to the sink to turn on the tap, to get a drink, to wash my hands, to clean a dish, to wet my toothbrush. I thought of water much like the air. It's just always there whenever you want it to do whatever you wish to do with it. Not only is it always there it is also always safe to drink. I was amazed at how much I took having water for granted.

For most of the world getting water is not so easy. There are so many places all over the world where if people want water, they have to work to get it, often including long walks to a river or lake, carrying buckets to bring just a small amount of water back home each time. As much as I take for granted a long, hot shower, for most people on this planet such an activity would never even cross their minds as a possibility.

The water we take for granted is an astounding wonder of God's creation. It comes into our lives as a gas in water vapor, or as a solid in ice cubes, or as slush in snow, or as a liquid. And it's almost always in some kind of motion evaporating from lakes and oceans to form clouds which then rain back down upon the earth. Water is taken up by every living thing, both plant and animal, and yet it's never locked in because even plants and creatures return some water back before they take more in to replenish what was used. We are 50% to 75% water, and without enough water, we know we will die. All the food that we eat is also dependent upon water for its growth, so without water to nourish plants and animals, we would starve to death.

And not only that we even use water to wash and cook the food we eat that grew because of water. And the pots and pans we use to cook were manufactured using water, as well as the clothes we're wearing while we cook it, on a stove that may be heated from electricity created at a far away dam. And those pots and pans will be cleaned with water so they can be used again.

Water is not only found on earth, but in other places in the universe as well. I read that in July of 2011 it was reported that a gigantic cloud of water vapor was found in space located 12 billion light years from earth. It is estimated that this cloud of vapor holds more than 140 trillion times more water than all the earth's oceans. Now that is a marvelous thing.

I think we tend to take water for granted because here, in the Willamette Valley, we have so much of it that sometimes we might even pray, "O Lord, please stop wetting us." We take it for granted because for nearly all of us it is plentiful and easy to obtain, so we rarely have to give it a thought. It's abundant, it costs us almost nothing to use it and so as is our nature, we tend not to consider it, value it, or even think about its importance in our lives.

I believe we can act in the same manner in regards to God's grace. It is super-abundant, more so than the whole universe itself. Like water, it's a genuine part of our lives but one that we may not take much notice of. It's absolutely necessary for our life in Christ because without it we cannot share in the divine life of God Himself. Christ paid for the distribution of this grace with His own life, but it comes to us as a gift freely given and we are not always people who value what we receive without paying for it ourselves. And isn't that strange? That we sometimes value something more because of what we paid to obtain it, rather than judging its value by what is it worth in and of itself.

This may be one reason we undervalue grace. Because it is free. I think another reason people undervalue grace is because we cannot see it, and we rarely feel it, and grace cannot be measured or quantified. Yet it supports our life, it helps us stand against temptation, it aids us in practicing virtue, it leads us to seek out the presence of Christ our Lord as the One to Whom we entrust our lives—or the One to Whom we should be entrusting our lives. Grace helps us to that.

If our bodies are 50-75% water, what percentage of our lives is fueled by grace? How often have we asked, when was the last time we asked the Lord to grant us the grace we need to continue to transform our lives into the holiness He desires for us? Into the fullness of divine life He wants to share with us? Into a life that is not dead-ended in this world, but which truly has a vision of something infinitely more spectacular than anything the universe contains—a vision of life eternal, life eternal in perfect love.

We ought to seek grace, pray for grace, be open to grace, be thankful for grace and live nourished by grace. We need it no less than water to be truly and completely alive. The waters of our baptism were not merely a flooding of H2O molecules, but they carried us into the life of Almighty God, one in the Holy Trinity. What those waters began, let us continue to actively seek so that when we finish this earthly life we may find ourselves entering a heavenly home where we will be so very glad with God.