Walking With Christ

Story time…

There once was a family who lived near a broad pasture fed by a mountain spring.  For many years, the water had been good.

It filled the troughs in the fields, watered the gardens, sustained the animals, and supplied the homes nearby.  The family drank from it every day.

Their children grew beside that water.  Their crops flourished because of it.  Their table was filled because of it.

There’d been a time when visitors would come to their home, and the family would proudly fill a pitcher.  “Taste this,” they would say. “You won’t find better water anywhere.”  And for a long time, they were right.

Then something changed.  It happened slowly enough that no one noticed at first.

One year, the garden didn’t grow quite as well.  The tomatoes were smaller.  The corn was thinner.  The leaves yellowed earlier than they should have.

The family blamed the soil.  That seemed reasonable.

So, they worked it harder.  They added fertilizer.  They rotated the crops.  They bought better seed.  They changed when they planted.

The next year was no better.  So, they blamed the weather.  Too much rain.  Not enough rain.  Too much heat.  Too many cold nights.

There was always something that could explain it.

The family questioned nearly everything around the water before they were willing to question the water itself.

Eventually, they did.

What they found was difficult to accept.  The spring on the mountain was still clean.  It hadn’t changed.

But somewhere between the spring and the places where the water was being collected, something had gone wrong.

The water reaching them had taken on a strange taste.

A bitterness.  A faint metallic sting.

At first, it was easy to ignore.  They’d been drinking that water for years.  Surely it couldn’t be the problem.

But once they knew what to look for, they began noticing things they’d previously explained away.

The residue left behind.  The smell.  The strange color that sometimes appeared when the light hit the water just right.  The way some plants responded.  The way some animals refused to drink until they were thirsty enough to stop caring.

Eventually, the family made a difficult decision.

They stopped drinking it.  They found another place to gather water.

It was inconvenient.  It required more effort.  There were days when carrying water home felt ridiculous when there was already plenty available nearby.

People noticed.  Some asked questions.  Some laughed.  Some were offended.

“You’ve been drinking this water your whole life.”

“Our family still drinks it.”

“We’re fine.”

“You’re overreacting.”

“You always were too particular.”

A few took the family’s decision personally.  They thought refusing the water meant refusing them.

But the family didn’t stop visiting.

They still shared meals, helped when a fence fell, and showed up when someone was sick.

They still celebrated weddings, births, harvests, and birthdays.

They never demanded that their friends abandon their homes.  They never walked through the pasture carrying signs.  They never stood beside the road shouting warnings at everyone who passed.

When someone sincerely asked why they’d changed where they got their water, they answered honestly.  Most of the time, they simply carried their own.

Years passed.

One evening, the family visited some old friends.  The house was familiar.  So were the voices around the table.

They talked about children who’d grown, people who’d moved away, crops that had succeeded, crops that had failed, and all the ordinary things people talk about when enough time has passed between visits.

Someone laughed about something that had happened years earlier.  Everyone remembered it differently.

For a while, it felt as though nothing had changed.

Their host stood and walked into the kitchen.  A few moments later, he returned carrying a pitcher and several clean glasses.  He poured one for each person at the table.

The father picked up his glass.  Before it ever reached his lips, he stopped.  The smell was faint.  Someone unfamiliar with it probably would not have noticed.  But he knew it.

Years had passed, yet he remembered.  That bitter, metallic sting.

He lowered the glass.  His friend noticed.  “You don’t like it?”

The man looked at the cup.  “I know this water.”

His friend seemed confused for a moment.  Then someone else asked about one of the children, and the conversation moved on.

The cup remained on the table.  Untouched.

They talked about old friends.  They remembered people they hadn’t seen in years.  They spoke about work, family, disappointments, answered prayers, unanswered prayers, and plans that had changed.

The cup stayed between them.

Every so often, the man caught the smell again.  He didn’t push the glass away in disgust.  He didn’t accuse his friend of trying to harm him.  He didn’t demand that everyone else stop drinking.

His friend lifted his own cup several times without hesitation.

The man watched him once, then looked away.  There had been a time when he had done the same.

That memory kept him humble.

He remembered how long it had taken him to notice.  He remembered blaming the soil, the seed, and the weather.  He even remembered blaming himself.

For a long time, questioning the water had seemed unthinkable.  So, he wouldn’t condemn the man sitting across from him for drinking what he himself had once defended.

The conversation continued.  The water slowly warmed.  Drops of condensation slid down the side of the glass and gathered beneath it.  Eventually, a dark ring appeared on the wooden table.

His friend glanced at the cup again.  “You’re sure you don’t want something to drink?”

The man smiled.  “I’m sure.”

There was no argument.  No accusation.  No lecture.  His friend nodded.

Someone began another story.  They laughed again.

Later that evening, the family prepared to leave.  There were handshakes, hugs, promises not to wait so long before visiting again, and the usual conversations that happen while people are standing in a doorway trying to leave but not quite ready to go.

The father looked back once.  The glass was still sitting where he had left it.  Nearly full.

For a moment, he remembered another time.  A time when he would’ve drained that glass without hesitation.  A time when he might even have defended the water if someone else refused it.

He wasn’t angry at the cup.  The cup was clean.

He wasn’t angry at the hand that poured it.  The hand belonged to someone he loved.

But neither the cleanliness of the cup nor the sincerity of the person holding the pitcher could change what had been poured into it.

A different vessel didn’t change the water.

The family walked home together beneath the evening sky.  They hadn’t lost their friends.  They hadn’t started a fight.  They hadn’t demanded that anyone follow them.

They’d simply learned something difficult.

You can love the people at the table.  You can value the years you shared.  You can remember the good that once came from the same place.  You can remain grateful for what was.

And still leave the cup untouched.

Because sometimes wisdom isn’t found in throwing the cup across the room.

Sometimes it’s simply knowing the taste of the water…

and refusing to drink.

This story shares the same field as an earlier parable, “The Trough: A Watchman’s Parable.” You don’t need to have read it first, but some of the water may taste familiar.