The Watering-Can Man
Less than a year after my mother died, I drove one hundred miles to the cemetery to see if a granite company had installed my mom's and dad's picture on their gravestone. Sure enough, it was there, Mom and Dad posing under a porcelain oval, and it looked so nice! However, seeing their picture in full color on the stone was almost more than I could handle. Mom and Dad belonged on this side with me—not under the ground. I struggled to keep my composure, thankful that I had the entire small-town cemetery to myself.
Just then, a small car zipped up the gravel cemetery road and parked. I turned, annoyed. A man emerged and walked purposefully toward me, watering can in hand, without any consideration for my privacy. I soon recognized him as one of my sister's friends. As we began talking, he told me that he'd planted grass seed in front of my parents' stone. Every day he fills a plastic watering can, drives two miles to the cemetery while the water sloshes onto his car floor, and waters the grass seed. Every day, new life sprouts around my parents' gravestone because this man faithfully hefts a watering can.
He is a man of few words. Occasionally unemployed, not in particularly good physical condition, he is not the type of man who turns heads. He is no longer in touch with our family, and I'll probably never see him again.
But at that moment, God intersected our paths. The good deed of this man, simple as it was, became a comforting message from Heaven at the exact moment I needed it. As if God had spoken audibly from the clouds, the watering-can man's actions said to me: "Trust me. I am taking good care of your mom and dad."
This man may never know what he did for me that day. I am just glad that he, and others like him, keep watering.
I [Paul] have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. (1 Cor. 3:6 KJV)