WHEN SHOULD I DRILL?

I was breaking apart a fortune cookie last week to find my fortune. I had enjoyed some really good fried rice, and was looking forward to the cookie. I should mention I love fortune cookies: (1) because I like the taste of them; and (2) sometimes there are some interesting “messages” in there. More and more, it seems like they aren’t really fortunes, but something else. I always show mine to my husband and then read his and see if they “make sense” compared to who we are. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.


But this time, I have to say, it sounded more like a proverb or than a fortune.

It is too late to start digging a well when you feel thirsty.

I actually took a picture of it and have it on my phone. I’ve gone back and read and re-read it a few times. I was really impressed. It made so much sense to me. I grew up in rural downstate New York (Oxford, New York if anyone knows the place). The road I lived on did not have village water; so we all had wells.  I remember when it was really hot in the summer, sometimes the water would get a peculiar smell and taste (known as sulphur water). Many people don’t care for it, but I always liked it; it tasted like home.  When I moved to Syracuse, I found that “city water” was pretty tasteless!


My parents’ well was deep, so we never ran out of water, no matter how dry or hot the summer. However, there were some people that had to drill a new well or drill down further in their current well.  It took some time, especially if the well had gone completely dry and they had to find a new area to drill.


As the saying said, when it’s dry, it’s too late to start drilling, because your thirst isn’t going to get quenched for a very long time.


There are movies and stories about a water diviner who comes, holding a stick that will show where water is and where you need to drill. There’s a play, The Rainmaker, that has a con artist come to town promising rain during a drought.

It’s always dry, and it’s been dry a long time; and it takes a long time for water to make an appearance.


A theology of stewardship and how money is used and raised is the same way.

·      *   If we wait until we’ve run out of money, what will we do while we’re trying to raise new money?

·    * Will there be donors when everything’s dried up?

·         

     *If we just spend the money we have, not worrying about the future, what happens when there’s an unplanned event and there’s nothing left?

·       *  Will that unplanned event “speak” to the people that will give?

·        * If we don’t worry about the future, believing that everything will be cared for, how can we ever be ready for the future?

·         The future is going to come, planned for or not. Wouldn’t it be easier to plan? 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been very lucky in my life; I’ve never been really, really thirsty. Sure, there were summer days when a nice cold glass of water tasted good. And I went through more than two large bottles of water when I was on a mission trip to Haiti in July! BUT water has always been available to me. I have been lucky. Thirst is a real issue, and drilling a well, while it might be a solution, is a solution that should already be cared for prior to the point where thirst is a problem.


Stewardship is the same. Of course, God provides. God is a God of abundance, not scarcity, but WE have a responsibility as stewards to do the work of “drilling” before the well has run dry.

·         Isn’t it easier to plan?

·         Isn’t it easier to drill?

·         Isn’t it easier to care for what God has provided?

Rev. Susan M. Ranous

Deacon of Stewardship

Certified Public Accountant

7481 Henry Clay Boulevard

Liverpool, New York 13088

(315) 427-3668

susanranous@unyumc.org