Streams in the Desert

 November 26, 2020

In 1918, due to his ill health, seventeen years of missionary work in Japan and Korea came to an end when Charles and Lettie Cowman returned to the United States. They had founded the Oriental Missionary Society, proclaimed the Gospel to sixty million Japanese, and had plans for evangelizing all of Asia. Mr. Cowman’s health continued to decline until he died in 1924. His wife continued and expanded the work into Eastern Europea in addition to India, China, and Central and South America. 

Mrs. Cowman also wrote, out of her own grief at watching her husband suffer and die. Her first book, a daily devotional called Streams in the Desert, was published in 1925, and has been reprinted many times over the years. The copy I brought home following my mother’s funeral has a copywrite date of 1950, and is heavily noted and underlined in her neat, secretarial script.

Today’s reading is taken from Joshua 15:18-19. Caleb said to her, “What do you wish?” She answered, “Give me a blessing; since you have given me land in the South, give me also springs of water.” So he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.   

Cowman writes, “There are both upper and lower springs. They are springs, not stagnant pools. There are joys and blessings that flow from above through the hottest summer and the most desert land of sorrow and trial...

“There are springs that flow in the low places of life, in the hard places, in the desert places, in the lone place, in the common places, and no matter what may be our situation, we can always find these upper springs.” 

She goes on to enumerate various Bible heroes who found sustenance and refreshment in the Lord in the midst of difficult and trying circumstances, concluding, “We can find them all the year if we have the Comforter in our hearts and have learned to say with David, “All my springs are in thee.” Jesus himself said as much when he declared to the woman at the well, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” —John 4:14 

Across our nation and world, we are experiencing trials such as most of us have not seen in our lifetime. People are worried and afraid, confused and angry, and on this day of national Thanksgiving, it is tempting to think all is lost. Many of us are in a desert place, and the springs that we’ve come to depend upon are drying up, which is why it is so critical to trust in Jesus Christ, who alone can make the springs of his Holy Spirit well up from within us, providing the refreshment and life we so desperately need. May we this Thanksgiving, give praise to our God hrist, our Living Water...even in the desert.