A welcome summer shower

The summer of 1979 found us on an extended camping trip in the Colorado high country.

Well, we weren't really camping, except we were living in a tent, in the great outdoors, cooking al fresco and washing dishes in water heated over a propane stove.

We were, or rather Danny was, working a summer construction job developing land for a golf course and exclusive mountain community. West of Vail, we were at about 9,000 feet above sea level.

Ben turned 4 that summer and I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy for Lisa. (I had my doctor's permission to be at that altitude, though I did know that I would have to return to the city by the end of August.

I have a natural aversion to outhouses and so was grateful to discover that a modern rest stop was just one mile west of our location on Interstate 70. Ben and I made regular jaunts to that location each day. A 4-year-old is hard to keep clean in any event, but add the fun and the sun of a mountainside in July and you have a recipe for filth.

Each Friday after work, we'd load the car with dirty clothes and head home for the weekend. It was a mad dash to see who could lay claim to the shower first once we arrived. What a marvelous thing clean skin on clean sheets can be. I didn't think anything could rival that particular pleasure.

Until Danny accepted a 24/7 assignment to monitor the pumps presoaking the slopes of the planned golf course. It meant sacrificing our weekends home. It meant three weeks straight, no breaks, on the mountainside.

We did our level best to maintain an appropriate level of personal hygiene, but the time soon came during our long stay when enough was enough and we wanted, no, we needed, long hot showers.

I am not a fan of communal bathing. I am far too modest -- and at the time was in a particularly telling physical condition that demanded an even higher level of modesty to feel comfortable on public display. Nonetheless, we discovered several miles further west, a KOA campground where we could buy a shower for a couple of bucks.

Gathering deodorant soap, shampoos, wash clothes and clean towels, we made our way to the campground. Overcoming my reticence, I made my way into a remarkably busy shower room filled with women of all ages in various stages of undress. I couldn't get myself into the privacy of the shower stall quick enough and thought only to make a quick trip beneath the cleansing flow.

Wrong. Never had I felt such a blessed sensation as I did that evening. Warm soapy water flushed days of dirt, grime and sweat from my body. I was loathe to leave. I stood under the refreshing stream with no concern for the passing time. I shampooed my hair, rinsed and happily repeated, not once but twice, taking the manufacturer's directions perhaps a little too far.

Finally, although nearly a prune, I was clean.

It makes me just a little melancholy to remember the day of my baptism, coming up out of the water, clean. Of course, baptism is only a symbolic cleansing, an act of obedience that pleased God who, through the promise of his Son, had already provided forgiveness, yet my soul, for the first time in my life, felt pure. It was a turning point.

Unfortunately, after that summer shower on a mountainside, once I stepped out of the water's flow, dirt, sweat and grime found its way to me once again and I have required frequent baths and showers since then.

And, even though I had found my way to the cross and had come under the waters of baptism, sin soon soiled my soul once again. Hence the need for spiritual cleansing through prayer, study and confession.

Having once felt the close communion only possible for those forgiven, I cannot stand to be long separated from the one who forgives.

Because sin separates. The adulterer who returns to his bed of infidelity turns his back to God when he does so.

The thief, whether by conniving or force, who returns to take from someone something he has not earned, turns his back to God to do so.

The drunkard who returns to his cups turns his back to God to lift the poison to his lips.

Each, when calamity comes, as it inevitably will, cries out to God, and cannot understand why God does not answer.

The answer is plain. Sin separates. The solution is simple, grace restores.

Because, just as the refreshing water cleans the dirt, grime and sweat from the body, so too does the Living Water cleanse the soul.

"The Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." Rev. 22:17 (NIV)