SPRINGS OF LIVING WATER-- THEN AND NOW

"There is a fountain!"

The Indiana soil was scorched and cracked.  Mud caked the bottoms of the empty Hoosier rivers and creeks.  Farm animals were threatened and the hope of a bountiful harvest was quickly becoming lost in in the scorching heating.  Wells were drying up and hope   was almost gone.

Although it sounds a lot like the summer our Midwest friends have just come through in 2012, it was a drought filled summer in the 1920s.  Unlike now, then it was a matter of life and death.  There was no crop insurance, no help in sight.  

The little village of Plainfield, a Quaker community
just west of Indianapolis, came dramatically to the rescue.  Citizens began to dig a well on the outskirts of town.  They dug and dug and dug.  Long hard hours in the hot sun were spent with shovels and hoes.  Praying and digging they searched deeper and deeper for the life giving water.  Finally they found it....deep inside the parched earth....water, fresh water in abundance; life giving, life saving water.  Farmers came, rusty pick-up truck after rusty pick-up truck.  Buckets and barrels were filled and re-filled.  Hope returned....lives were changed.

Today that old well stands capped in the shadow of the cross on the front of the United Community Church of the Nazarene.  One life saving well capped and one life well still flowing and changing lives.  One that was a source of renewal and refreshing for a season and one that will flow with renewal and refreshing throughout eternity.

There they stand side by side, a reminder of what was and of what is!  One long forgotten, one that continually provides hope in a life and death struggle.

This growing church has become a new gathering place where folks can come and be refreshed, where lives can be renewed, where hope can be restored.  The members have worked long and hard to dig out a "well spring" place where people's needs can be supplied.  Reminds me of some lines from some beautiful old hymns.

"All my life long I had panted for a drink from some cool spring
that I hoped would quench the burning of the thirst I felt within.
Hallelujah, I have found Him....Jesus satisfies my longing...."

"Ho, everyone that is thirsty in spirit, Ho everyone that is weary and sad;
Come to the fountain there's fullness in Jesus, all you are longing for, come and be glad."

"Drinking at the springs of living water, Happy now am I, my soul they satisfy;
Drinking at the springs of living water, O wonderful and bountiful supply."

Rick Wetnight, Song Evangelist and Pastor Darwin Pressler