Is Sand In Your Well?

So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. Genesis 26:15 

  

  Poor Isaac. God is supposed to be on his side, but everywhere he goes he is made unwelcome, and people keep stealing his wells and filling them with sand. 

  Sometimes I feel like Isaac. I know God is with me, but something keeps clogging my well with sand. Financial challenges increase, health problems increase, and inter-personal relationships become problematic. Just when I think my well is dug and filling with water, something comes along to stop the flow of God’s blessings and resets my well of optimism to one of disappointment. 

  It is tough to be on the brink of blessings and then get slammed by disappointments. We can sometimes feel victory within our grasp but then disappointment comes along to stop up the well of blessing we foresaw. It angers me to see victory snatched out of my hand, and just like Isaac going to drink from his newly dug well, instead of blessed water finding only dry sand. 

  Chronic disappointment can sap our hope and our will to keep fighting. I can imagine Isaac throwing his hands up to the heavens and asking the Lord “Why? Why do you let all my hard work, my hope for life-giving water, why do you let my wells get filled with sand by my enemy?” 

  Our enemy comes in different guises. Sometimes our enemy is affliction itself, but often it is the difficulties that surround affliction, such as strife with family members or friends. Our enemy may be added financial hardship because of our inability to work or due to added health care costs. Whatever the guise our enemy takes, we know how it feels when our freshly dug well of hope is dashed by the sand of disappointment. 

  Fellow sufferer on the path of affliction, I know what it is to have hopes dashed, and to want fresh hope and strength, yet find sand flung in your face. It is not easy to deal with disappointment in the best of times, much less so in the land of affliction. We need the refreshing water of hope fulfilled. 

  I would encourage you with this word, Isaac’s enemies eventually made peace with him. He found a well that was not taken from him, and he drank of its life-giving water. I encourage you to go to the well of the Spirit of God, ask for your hope to be fulfilled, and drink from that eternal well that can quench your thirst even in a dry and thirsty land. 

  Prayer: Dear Lord, give us the water of the Spirit, refresh us, fulfill our hopes, renew a sense of optimism for the future in our hearts and minds. Amen.