Deep Cisterns Blessing

I bless your every taste

Of Living Water

That pools in the cisterns you did not dig.

When God told His people

To remember and be grateful

When they entered a Promised Land

Full of cisterns they did not dig,

He was speaking of reservoirs

That their forebears hand-dug

To collect the winter rains

So there would be water during the parched summer.

Like the 1500-year-old cistern

Discovered under a sandy playground

Outside Jerusalem that the Israel Antiquities Authority

Excavated in 2005.

It was chiseled out of rock underground

And could hold 300,000 gallons of water.

Time and sweat and pain,

Dug by someone before you,

And now you drink so freely, without thought—

But had they not dug,

It would be your hands blistered,

Your back wrenched.

Oh thank God for those who have

Dug the cisterns long before you

And God bless your every cup of living water.