A Word About Drips

My head wanders off into the craziest places, sometimes. The other day, as I was watering some of my wife’s houseplants outside, I noticed that the hose bib connected to the faucet was dripping when I turned on the water. As I stood there watering flowers holding a hose with a spray nozzle, on the other end of the hose, where it’s attached to the faucet … drip, drip, drip. Not a showery spray. Just one drop at a time, falling uselessly onto the ground.

And that’s when my mind sort of wandered off into a crazy place.

 

How much water was I wasting? I ‘wondered’ in my wandering. I was so preoccupied with my wondering that I couldn’t help myself. When I got back in the house, I had to know the answer. So, I did what any twenty-first century mindless person needing an answer to a hard question would do: I asked Chat GPT about how much water was in a ‘drop.’ What would have taken me a ridiculous amount of time to calculate took AI about 3 seconds. Turns out the answer is that there’s about five one-hundredths of a milliliter of water in one drop.

Not that anyone else is interested, but if my hose bib dripped one drop of water every ten seconds, I’d fill a one-gallon bucket in 8.7 days. If my hose bib dripped one drop every 3 seconds, I’d fill that gallon bucket in 2.6 days. But my hose bib was dripping one drop of water every second. That’s like, drip, drip, drip, drip. And in a little less than twenty-four hours, unless I fix it, one gallon of fresh, clean water will have dripped right out onto the ground, five one-hundredths of a milliliter at a time. That’s thirty-gallons in a month. That’s three-hundred and sixty-five gallons in a year. That’s a lot of water.

 

I am amazed at the difference between a drop and drip, as I examine my life. Drops and drips are close in spelling. Only one letter difference. But the distance between the meaning and the impact of those two little four-letter words can be miles and miles apart in my life. One of the big differences I notice is that drops can mount up. And drips? Drips can be annoying.

 

O Lord,

Don’t let me be like some drippy faucet. Don’t let me be an annoyance with my life, like some drippy shower head that drip, drip, drips in the middle of the night while people all around me are longing for peace and quiet. Help me pay attention, Lord. Help me notice the dripping and tighten my grip on relationships with others. I can do better at that. I need your help.

 

And bring me to a place of noticing the value of drops in my life, too, Lord. Drops mount up. Your word, watering my soul every day is a stream of encouragement and strength. There is tremendous growth in what your word can produce in my life. I would do well to understand that such joy and nurture is not dispensed by the gallon or the bucket full. The greatest value I can ever know from you is gleaned from your holy word washing over my mindless life every single day … one drop at a time. Drops over time can produce amazing results.

 

Words are mere bubbles of water,
but deeds are drops of gold. (Chinese proverb)