Dried Out

I arrived at Chapel soaked two Sunday mornings back. Half a mile into my bicycle journey and it poured. I soon got to the point of being unable to get any wetter, so I stopped fretting. Living in England’s second wettest county, one must expect such things. I keep changes of clothing in the vestry and soon dried off and looked presentable. The afternoon became better, so I attached my socks to the railings and dried them in the breeze. By the time I returned from Hetton, they were dry enough to wear.

Wet clothes are horrible to have on. Yet there are many places in scripture in which dryness is bad. We in a wet climate appreciate the dry; they, in a dry and hot land, longed for moisture. Although not a negative adjective per se, I present a selection of scriptural ‘dries’ to be avoided:

Luke 11:24: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’

‘Dry places’ refers to the hostile, arid places inhabited by demonic beings from which human bodies offer some respite.

Luke 23:31 “For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?”

The 'green wood' is the good times with Jesus, while the dry are the worse times without Him, spoken ahead of His death.

Psalm 63:1 O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

Written while in the wilderness, David likens the hard, arid environment to his own, spiritual thirst.

Psalm 69:3: I am weary with my crying; my throat is dry; my eyes fail while I wait for my God.

We all get dry throats, but here the psalmist’s dryness is on account of his suffering.

Job 24:24: They are exalted for a little while, then they are gone. They are brought low; they are taken out of the way like all others; they dry out like the heads of grain.

Here, Job meditates upon the end of the earth’s Mighty Ones; great in their day, they eventually dry up and blow away.

Dryness is good for socks, days out and senses of humour; for times, eyes, scalps, souls, spiritual places and emotional states, not so. I know some churches which have dried up, and some Christians who seem pretty dry, too. Unless you are a once soggy sock, this is not a good state to be in. 

He turns a wilderness into pools of water, and dry land into watersprings. Psalm 107:35