Slow-Motion Crisis

According to an article in today's New York Times, a crisis of epic proportion lurks beneath a large portion of the country in the diminishing returns of the High Plains Aquifer, a waterlogged jumble of sand, clay and gravel that begins beneath Wyoming and South Dakota and stretches clear to the Texas Panhandle. The aquifer’s northern reaches still hold enough water in many places to last hundreds of years. But as one heads south, it is increasingly tapped out, drained by ever more intensive farming and, lately, by drought.

Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry. In many other places, there no longer is enough water to supply farmers’ peak needs during Kansas’ scorching summers. And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

This is in many ways a slow-motion crisis — decades in the making, imminent for some, years or decades away for others, hitting one farm but leaving an adjacent one untouched. But across the rolling plains and tarmac-flat farmland near the Kansas-Colorado border, the effects of depletion are evident everywhere. Highway bridges span arid stream beds. Most of the creeks and rivers that once veined the land have dried up as 60 years of pumping have pulled groundwater levels down by scores and even hundreds of feet.

The same may be said of spiritual drought--it is a slow-motion crisis. Born of long periods of neglect, we find ourselves bereft of any joy associated with our relationship with God. Prayer seems futile, Scripture falls flat, and worship is hollow. We never get to such a low place suddenly. Instead, what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul" develops gradually, but the result is deadly.

How should we respond when we become aware of the low level of our spiritual state? Refuse the temptation of turning to resources that tell about God, and accept no substitutes for seeking God himself. The remedy for spiritual drought is nothing less than a person--a personal encounter with Christ. When everything is stripped away and you find yourself clinging desperately to Christ like Jacob did the wrestling angel, then you will experience the torrent of spiritual desire and satisfaction rising. When He is everything and when He is enough, the spirituals clouds will form laden with life-giving droplets that will fall as refreshing rain upon your soul. In short, the remedy for spiritual decline is nothing less than a relentless return to God Himself.