I’m volunteering in my daughter’s classroom today.
Surrounded by flowers, magnifying glasses, and scissors, I’m told I should let the children observe, draw, and then tear the flowers apart for scientific purposes.
“There’s juice in here!” One boy cries and squeezes out the insides of the flower’s stem. “There’s lots of juice in here, but it smells like asparagus.” He passes the stem around to let the others share in his discovery.
“Did you know,” another boy claims, “that if you cut a cactus in half, you could drink all the juice inside and live for days in the desert? Did you know that?”
“I’m so relieved!” I say. “We wouldn’t die out there. We’d find a cactus and slurp all the juice.”
“We’d be OK,” the children say, comforted by the thought of it.
We would. I look at flowers and stems cut to pieces around me. At that point of destruction, water flows. We keep tearing, and I think, “Even in the desert, we’d survive.”
We’re all nodding together as water seeps onto our magnifying glasses, our fingers, and even our desks.
We will survive. No matter what the drought, we will. Torn apart, water flows.
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Penn State needs continued prayer. Thank you.
