The Scent of Water

In my experience, it takes a year – maybe two – to move into a house and for a new house to become a home. For me in my house, it often takes a massive overhaul (about one year in) to settle us and our things into our proper places.

Our family just celebrated our first year here in the Comox Valley and at Living Hope Church. (!!) Predictably for me around the anniversary, I was seized with an uncontrollable desire to move furniture! Couches, bookshelves, coffee tables, wall hangings, plants and pillows were moved and repurposed in new rooms or floors; kids were conscripted to carry, arrange, and pose. It took a few days, but now our house feels much more like a home. As we find places for our things, we find ourselves placed more deeply here.

One of my tasks was to set up and organize our bookshelves. We love our books – they represent pieces of our family history; The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be that we read on our honeymoon; the Little House on the Prairie series, our first family read-alouds; Jayber Crow that made us cry; Stephen Lawhead’s Hood series books that absorbed us for days at a time, they are all part of our story.

One special find was a 1963 copy of The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge. Not my usual genre, it somehow made it into our book collection.  As I moved our books, I was intrigued by the title and thought to give it a read.

Goudge writes heart-warming, faith-infused stories about humanity and creation. Filled with sweetness, her stories draw readers to examine relationships, love, growing up and beauty complete with happy endings and a fairy tale feel. The Scent of Water is a novel of hope amidst change, of grief and reconciliation, of loss and renewal, all of which sparked my empathy and imagination. But it was the verse after which this book is titled that drew, and continued, to draw me.

The language of “the scent of water” comes from Job 14 where the author reflects on the sad fate of humanity, observing:

“Even a tree has more hope!

    If it is cut down, it will sprout again

    and grow new branches.

Though its roots have grown old in the earth

    and its stump decays,

at the scent of water it will bud

    and sprout again like a new seedling.”

I am intrigued by the poetic language (language used in most translations: ESV, NIV, KJV, NRSV, NLT) of the “scent of water”. The Message uses the word “whiff” – the merest inference of water. I am inspired by the poetry of this verse; it draws me into the mystery of new growth. Goudge’s gentle story touched my heart with the deep longing to be like that bud. I want to rest in God’s work in the world and to pursue whatever comes to me with unwavering hope.

So now this book has a meaningful place on my shelf to remind me of 2020 – pandemic, economics, protests. There are no easy answers to these, but I want to carefully engage the world with a fundamental posture of hope; looking for God at work, nourished and flourishing at the merest ‘scent’ of His work in the world.