The night before my husband and I were to fly to Boston to meet our new grandson, I just happened to walk out to the back of our yard and heard water gushing. We have a couple of water features in our yard, and from our property we can see and hear Little Cottonwood Creek. I knew that none of these could make the loud, gushing sound I was hearing.
It was nearly dark but I followed the sound of water and discovered not just a broken sprinkler pipe, but that the larger pressure pipe was broken. Though I had no idea how long it had been running, the water had made deep gashes in the rose garden and was flooding the hillside below.
My husband hurriedly turned off the main water valve and ran to Home Depot just before it closed to get some PVC connections. He cobbled it together, but when he turned the water back on later, the fix broke. At midnight we could do nothing more and had to leave early in the morning. We didn’t know any sprinkler repairman we could call at that hour.
It was mid-July, and the Salt Lake Valley was experiencing record heat and no rain. I knew that because we live in the desert with very sandy soil, without water for more than a day or two, our whole yard would be dead when we returned. Fortunately, our son and next-door neighbor were able to improvise a solution, though one line had to be turned off and that part of my garden dried up. I shudder when I think of the possible damage to the home downhill from us or the size of our water bill had I not ventured outside that evening.
I call this experience “lessons of a broken pipe.”
The first lesson I learned was that one can’t feel too secure about the material world. June had been very rainy so we didn’t have to rely much on pipe water to keep the grass green, the flowers blooming, and our vegetables growing. We both had worked hard in early summer to weed, plant, trim, and beautify our garden. I felt confident that things would stay the same. But without the much-needed sprinklers in July, our 30 years of yard work could vanish almost overnight.
Certainly, the economy the past year has also emphasized this lesson. “Things” have not stayed the same and many people have suffered losses – homes, stock value, jobs, the security of the temporal world.
More important to me was the reminder, the lesson, to focus on eternal matters and the water that is most important. Jesus Christ gives us the Living Water of everlasting life. When Jesus met the woman of Samaria at the well, she only thought of physical thirst and missed his significant teaching.
“Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
“But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14).
We are blessed to live in the dispensation of the fulness of times, when the gospel, so long absent, was restored and the living waters are available to the earth’s inhabitants: “And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jersualem.” (Zech. 14:8).
The Savior offers this gift to all freely: “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain or the water of life freely” (Rev. 21:6).
Yet we must respond to the Lord’s invitation and partake: “Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” (2 Ne. 9:50).
Some refuse the water entirely; others think only of the difficulty of drawing from the well. But those who do drink of these waters experience joy beyond any temporal or physical realm. The Waters of Life are surely the greatest gift and the greatest joy of all: “Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” (Isa. 12:3).
