What is the answer for August—these end-of-summer days that languish near triple-digit temperatures, plants thirsty and withering? Where can we go for help?!
The Watering Rock
Good news! Jim Whitis of JCPJ Enterprises has a simple solution, the Watering Rock. He dreamed up this practical, low-tech product for “those hard-to-reach parts of his landscape,” tinkering with the design for several years until perfected.
His invention came to me just in time, as I had discovered an azalea shrub in our glory of Lebanon garden drooping and weary (the withered one, to the left of the tree, click to see its water-stressed leaves). Since rainy days are long gone, it struggles just beyond sprinkler spray.
Water From the Rock
As soon as I heard about JCPJ Enterprises’ product, resonating words filled my soul: Water from the rock! Water from the rock! The Watering Rock stirred more than a sense of relief in my gardener’s heart, it bloomed a story—the story of the Israelites worried and quarreling about where they would find water.
The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”
Exodus 17:1-2 NIV
Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”…. Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
Numbers 20:6-8, 11 NIV
God’s provision in this story added to the long list of wonders He had worked and displayed in the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt. They praised their God:
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
Exodus 15:11 NIV
Why, then, did they test God? Why did they quarrel, as if all of a sudden the LORD would refrain from his grace and compassion, his slowness to anger, his abounding love? This small story became a resounding reminder throughout the history of God’s people, a provision that continued to testify through the ages:
In their hunger you gave them bread from heaven and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock; you told them to go in and take possession of the land you had sworn with uplifted hand to give them.
Nehemiah 9:15 NIV
True, he struck the rock, and water gushed out, streams flowed abundantly
Psalm 78:20 NIV
He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed like a river in the desert.
Psalm 105:41 NIV
Tremble, earth, at the presence of the LORD, at the presences of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.
Psalm 114:7-8 NIV
My Rock and My Salvation
This simple mantra, Water From the Rock! rests us in a fractal truth that we need never thirst if we seek the Living Water that comes from the Rock that is Jesus Christ:
for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:4 NIV
Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive later.
John 7:37-39 NIV
“…whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:14 NIV
Am I putting God to the test, fretful that life will always have the heat and anguish of August?! Am I thinking and acting as if his wonder-working will not grace my life today? O Watering Rock, you are more than a practical way to water the hard-to-reach places in my garden. You are a reminder to find refuge in Water From the Rock!
May this simple reminder refresh us always. 
The answer for August? Trust, not test. Water From the Rock!
Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, and I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.
Psalm 62:6-8 NIV
Special thanks to Jim and Pam Whitis for providing the Watering Rock and so much more! For more information on Watering Rocks, visit www.watering-rocks.com
Also grateful to J. Berry Nursery for entrusting Deja-Bloom ‘Red Tiara‘ azaleas to my care; they are thriving and I look forward to fall’s bloom! For more on planting a Glory of Lebanon garden, see gardenndelight.wpengine.com/glory-lebanon-garden/
Photo Credits: ©2016 Shelley S. Cramm
