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Topic: Water (04/26/04)
TITLE: Raining in the Cracks By Donna Haug 05/02/04 |
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Donna Haug
May 2, 2004
“Hi! My name is Todd, T-O-Double D. I’m going to be your guide today. Please follow these few rules: No smoking. No drinking. No touching the calcium formations. And no taking pictures of the bats.”
So began our tour of Sudwala Caves in South Africa this past week. My husband and I were chaperones taking our children’s elementary school on an overnight field trip. We had just completed our tour of the reptile park, having had close encounters with snakes of all kinds - large, small, hooded, just plain huge, venomous and non-venomous - as well as crocodiles basking in the sunshine, some with mouths wide open for viewing. But now we were venturing into the depths of rock to do some exploring with our guide, T-O-Double D.
“If you look up here for a moment you will see a formation projecting out of the cave wall.” He pointed to a large ‘calcium formation’ which had morphed out of the sidewall of the cave. “This was formed as water from the top of the mountain dribbled down through the cracks picking up calcium as it went along. It seeped out of the cracks along the wall here and gradually over a period of plus or minus two billion years formed this what you see today. The Swasi who hid their cattle deep inside these caves used it as an alarm system. They would tap the bottom of this alarm as they came in, to warn their comrades of their arrival.” As he spoke he used a rubber mallet and hit the bottom of the formation. The sound traveled incredibly far. Ok, so with the emphasis on the MINUS on the number of years it took to form this pre-modern alarm system, this was pretty cool.
As we proceeded deeper into the cave, T-O-Double D showed us some fascinating stalactite and stalagmite formations that took “millions of years to form”. We saw everything from maps of Africa on the ceiling, the devil’s head upside down, two elephants sparring, to a monkey reading a book – all requiring intense imagination to see and all formed naturally over … plus or minus … millions of years.
We climbed to the “Devil’s Workshop”, sat in an “amphitheatre” with sound comparable to the “best of opera houses”, and squatted through a tunnel to reach the “fairy land” where water had pooled and reflected off the ceiling to project an incredible floating rock, fairy image. Children and adults alike were amazed at what we saw.
One thing that impacted me from T-O-Double D’s informative tour that day, besides wondering how he knew it took so long to form those formations, was the incredible beauty and awesome majesty formed solely by something so innocent and soft as drops of water. Little streams of rainwater trickled down through the cracks in the rock on the mountaintop, gradually working it’s way down becoming smaller and smaller picking up particles of calcium on route. As it found an outlet into the cave, the water deposited the calcium to hang on the ceiling or wall and proceeded to drop down to the floor where it formed another stalagmite or just evaporated. All of this from a couple of drops of water!
So, how about you? Have you ever wondered how much effect your words of testimony have? Have you ever felt like your acts of love and mercy don’t amount to much at all and won’t make a difference? As you continue faithfully raining your words of blessing, love and challenge into the cracks in people’s lives, praying that they will be saturated with the power of the Holy Spirit, you’ll be amazed at the results of your ministry of love in plus or minus a million years or so – like, in eternity. You can trust Him to do the forming, as long as you are faithful to just rain in the cracks.