These photos I've been seeing of Lake Mead in Nevada are startling. The reservoir on the Colorado River, which supplies water to Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico, has remained below full capacity since 1983 due to drought and increased water demand. It seems a combination of both natural and human causes. I don't live out in that part of the country, but if I did, I would be very concerned.
We take water for granted; that is, until we don't have it. When you don't, it can literally be a matter of life and death. Dying by thirst/dehydration is a horrible way to go as well. Water is also the element used in giving new spiritual life by baptism. Water is, literally, life. Without it, you can't grow crops (hunger/famine), can't bathe or wash (filth), can't baptize (damnation), can't live (thirst).
The Lord in His anger and mercy decided to wipe out humanity with a flood, save Noah and the Lord's chosen. It came over the course of forty days of rain, but Noah was given seven days warning. The waters stayed for one hundred and fifty days before receding. The Lord promised to never again destroy life and earth by the waters of flood (Gen 9:11).
But what if our coming chastisement was not a sudden washing away, but a terrible opposite--a slow and agonizing thirst for that which we have taken for granted--God, His grace and great mercy--in the form of the physical element of (lack of) water? What if we were to feel in physical thirst the terrible regret of failing to thirst for God, the way our Lord Christ thirsted for souls upon the cross in gasping, "I thirst" (Jn 19:28)
You can see how it played out in Num 20:2-11, in that "there was no water for the congregation, and they assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron," and that the Lord "brought water for you out of the rock of flint" (Deut 8:15). Yahweh sent plagues to Egypt to delivery the Israelites, the first being the turning of water into blood in Ex 7:14-24. And Our Lady has been warning us that in the end days "the survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead" (Akita)
Men have turned away from God due to sin and self-love, self-indulgence, and failing to steward well. What if the Lord in his merciful way of beating us (He disciplines those He loves. Heb 12:6) and using whatever means necessary to bring us back to Him by way of conversion, simply suspends the rains and dries up the earth? It will not be long until we then realize that we cannot live even a day without water, and even a moment in time without God.
Of course, this is all just speculation. No man knows the day nor the hour, or even how it will be in the end days, so we shouldn't spend too much time worrying or getting anxious about it. But we do need to heed the warnings, especially of Our Lady, to prepare spiritually. We have spilled out and wasted God's many graces and blessings, taken for granted His mercy and patience, presumed upon our guaranteed salvation in the most offensive of ways ("I'm a good person. I don't need to confess my sins. I'm going to Heaven when I die." Etc). Just the way those in the West just presumed there will always be water for them in the desert...until there isn't.
We should strive after the Lord the way a drowning man gasps for air, and search for Him the way a man dying of thirst seeks out a spring in the desert. Only then will we realize that without Christ, we are nothing and can do nothing apart from Christ, who is the true Vine.
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