Summertime in Texas started to wind down this week.

Yes, this week – the end of September.

Summer began back in May, when the temperatures first climbed toward triple digits (97 degrees was the high on May 19^th).

That means summer has been a constant companion for half a year now – baking squint-lines into faces and cracks into dry ground, making air conditioner repair companies rich.

This is not an unusual year, not a documentation of global warming, not a phenomenon fueled by the pandemic or western wildfires… this is just summertime in Texas.

The Four Seasons is more than music by Vivaldi …

When I first re-settled here, twenty years ago, I resisted accepting as inevitable the brevity of the other three seasons. I am a fall / spring person, myself, enchanted equally by the colors of leaves as they die and flowers as they bloom. That I would have approximately half an hour to enjoy each, annually, was outrageous to me.

But I have learned that outrage requires energy to sustain… and during a Texas summer, there is no spare energy. The energy requirements for enduring pretty much take what I have to give; in local parlance, I just hunker down to wait it out.

In more recent years, I’ve come to realize that Texas summer is good training for life. Brutal seasons without clear borders, oppressive conditions that persist long after our capacity to bear up under them, circumstances that shrivel and desiccate and wither us… they happen in life as surely as Texas summer happens, though (blessedly) with less regularity.

I was thinking about those parallels the other morning, watching hummingbirds work the crazy Turk’s cap shrub outside my window. Turk’s cap is one of the few plants hardwired to thrive in Texas summer. Emerging from dead-to-the-ground winter dormancy, it takes over the entire bed outside my window, elbowing aside the lavender and dahlias and pretty much anything else we try to plant as a neighbor. Once it’s stretched itself into a massive bush of defiantly pink blossoms and yellow-green leaves, it provides nectar for the butterflies that come early and the hummingbirds that come late. Turk’s cap is God’s sustenance for those little creatures through the summer months; Turk’s cap is God’s respite for my weary eyes through that same time period.

I had been reading scripture before I paused to reflect on the Texas summer / life lesson synchronicity. I was in Isaiah, savoring a favorite verse of mine:

“The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong.

And you will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

Isaiah 58:11

“Parched places” – that nails Texas summertime, alright.

That nails 2020, too. Think about it. “Parched places” – they dominate the headline news, they are the background for the national mindset, they even sadly constitute much of church life in the age of coronavirus. “Parched places.”

Then it hit me: in the midst of my doubly parched place – my Texas summer, circa 2020 – I had an amazing view of a “watered garden.” The Turk’s cap and its winged afficionados illustrate what Isaiah was talking about when he went from “parched places” to “watered gardens” in a breath: life. Life that persists. Life that flourishes. Life that lives on, in the parched places!

The metaphor fell short in one respect, though. Turk’s cap doesn’t need much water. It will persist and flourish based mostly on its own scrappy constitution. As a part of my watered garden or scrambling up anyhow in a field, Turk’s cap undermines the cause-and-effect that Isaiah is laying out in his “parched place” / “watered garden” description.

Cue the second “aha!” moment: my potted plants!

Here is the story of my potted plants…

Every spring, Mark rolls his eyes as I fill several containers with prissy, non-scorch-hardy flora. He wants perennials built like gladiators, ready to do battle with the elements and win. I want delicate shades and heady perfumes and intricate foliage. (We argue, every spring, over whether an English rose garden could be possible in Texas summertime. Of course not – but I yearn desperately enough to fight for the idea, anyway.) So, Mark plants things all around our house and I plant things in vessels on the back patio. Guess who has to water daily, all summer long? (Not Mark.)

Lovely as my plants are, sweet as that photo is, I confess I bumped my bare toes on a hard, pointy fact that is as obvious as the nose on our faces:

I AM NOT A PLANT … AND NEITHER ARE YOU.

Since we are neither Turk’s cap nor container-coddled lantana, how does Isaiah’s vision of God’s promise actually apply to us?

Understanding the key to people being like watered gardens in the parched places of life requires looking closely at the end of Isaiah’s image from God:

“You will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

“A spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

Not plants, but also not even remotely a description of yours truly, especially in Texas summertime, especially circa 2020. “Parched places” R Us.

What can God have been saying to His oh-so-human readers, in that beautiful inaccuracy, through Isaiah?

In a word, Jesus.

God is speaking the truth of Jesus to and through Isaiah.

Jesus explains in detail several centuries later, “…those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14, emphasis added)

And “(Jesus) cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, ³⁸ and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” ³⁹ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive…” (John 7:37 – 39, emphasis added)

The parched places are a given.

But the watered garden is a choice.

And the supply of water itself is a gift… ongoing… forever… through Jesus.

This Texas summertime will end, sooner or later, just like all the other Texas summertimes have ended.

The year 2020 will end, eventually, just like all the other years of catastrophe and plague and war and chaos have ended, eventually, all through history.

But the end of the parched places is not the end of the watered gardens. The end of the parched places is the beginning of the pay-off for persisting!

And the watered gardens – you and me and everyone who is drinking the water Jesus provides – will survive the parched places.

We will survive not because we’re so strong and hardy in ourselves, nor because we’ve found a shortcut through the heat. We will survive rather because we are watered by the living water, the spring gushing up to eternal life, the One who will never fail.  

Potted plants, Turk’s cap, crepe myrtles, and an Oklahoma rose…