Middle Loup River

It's no secret that Nebraska sits atop one of the most incredible fresh-water resources in the world--the Ogallala aquifer. Springs well up in the Sandhills, providing steady flow to several major rivers in the state. From one of these rivers, the Middle Loup, sprang my love for water back in my childhood years. It's also the river that recently earned me the nickname, John the Baptist.

I grew up back in the 70's, religiously attending the Baptist Church in Arcadia. It had a built-in baptistry so I didn't get to experience an outdoor immersion like you see in the movies. Pastor Tweter said that "water is water, whether it's in a river or an indoor cauldron," so I figured that I conformed to the biblical standards of baptism. But still, I had a deep down regret that I wasn't baptized in the spirited flow of a river.

Now, fast-forward to the recent past, when I took part in another immersion. My wife, Teri, friended a coworker who, out of the blue, popped the question, "Could your husband baptize me in the river?"

Slightly befuddled by her request, Teri replied, " Why sure--I'm sure he would be glad to..."

"Thanks a million!" the coworker exclaimed. "I've been pretty sick lately and I don't know how much longer I have to live. I'd feel a whole lot better if I could get baptized."

Teri presented me with the lady's request that evening over supper.

I was just as surprised at her inquiry. "I'm not an ordained minister," I replied after letting this soak in. "About the only credential I have is that I grew up a Baptist."

"Well, now you can be John, the Baptist," Teri replied, pleased with her quick wit.

We set a date in early September, when the river was still warm and the current gentle due to diversions up stream for irrigating. I knew of a spot below an old piling wing south of Comstock where the current created a natural hole deep enough to get wet. As the time neared, a thought occurred to me. This could be special water that we were baptizing in.

Somewhere in the past, I read an article about how water cycles itself. The writer claimed that all the water molecules on earth are just as they were when Earth was created--no more, no less. Each molecule has gone through several evaporation/condensation cycles in the course of history. During these cycles the water molecules have passed through at least ten different human beings. It could be that the water in your glass today was in Napoleon Bonaparte's drinking vessel two hundred years ago.

This line of thinking brought me to the point where the most famous baptism of all time took place. The location was the Jordan River in Israel and the date was AD 30, or about two thousand years ago. John the Baptist (the real one) immersed Jesus Christ in the river, signifying the start of His three year ministry on Earth.

What sent me on a drawn-out thought process was the water that touched Jesus' face as he went under the Jordan's surface. That water, which started as snow melt on Mt. Hermon to the north, eventually flowed downstream to the Dead Sea. But it didn't die there.

Dead Sea water evaporates into the sky, leaving the salt behind. This vapor flows in clouds to the east and eventually forms a rain drop which falls on the Euphrates river valley. The drop of water makes its way down the river and flows into the Persian Gulf. Waves push the drop out of the gulf and into the Indian Ocean. Monsoon ocean currents carry the water around the horn of India to the Bay of Bengal where it once again evaporates into the sky. The cloud drifts over Thailand and rains on Vietnam, where it ends up in the South China Sea. From there the water catches the Kuroshio ocean current, transporting it to the North Pacific Current. In time the water ends up in the California Current, heading south along the west coast of what will one day be the United States of America.

Okay, at this point you're thinking that I'm nuts. How can you possibly follow a raindrop halfway around the world and have it conveniently end up off the coast of California where it will evaporate and move in a cloud over the Rocky Mountains and fall to earth in the Nebraska Sandhills? You have a valid question. I'm not saying that all this is probable-- but is possible. If something is possible, then my boundless imagination will make it happen somehow.

So now, after say a decade of world travel, our water drop made it to western Grant County, Nebraska and fell gently to a hilltop as a snowflake. The snow lingered a few days above ground, but soon melted into the sponge-like sand, and down into the dark recesses of the Ogallala Aquifer. Then it begins it painstakingly slow movement to the east. Years go by. Decades pass. Centuries add up to twenty. Then suddenly, it sees daylight again! It's late summer when the water emerges from the sand on the upper reaches of the Middle Loup River. In a matter of minutes the drop of water flows down a mossy slope and into a tiny stream. As the water drop flows east, it gains more friends and what started out the size of a sidewalk soon becomes a lane, then a two-lane highway. More and more water stored up for centuries underground joins in to form a bona fide river.

Water in the Middle Loup's upper stretches clip along at around seven miles per hour. As it flows east, the downward gradient lessens and the water slows up a bit. Just below the town of Dunning another river joins the Middle Loup. The Dismal River has been paralleling the Loup since its beginning seventy-some miles upstream. Now the river is at full strength and on its way to a couple diversion dams. At Milburn some water is diverted into an irrigation canal. Further downstream, below the town of Comstock, a considerable amount of water is diverted into a canal toward Sherman Lake. Just below this dam is where we join our preceding baptism.

So I lead the lady into the gentle current out to the wing-dam hole. I grip her hand tightly as she steps off the shallow sand bar into the waist-deep water. "Pay no attention to the minnows nibbling at your toes," I say with a grin. "People in the city pay big money to have pedicures like this."

The lady's eye's widened, then she grinned. "I can feel them!"

I recited the regular baptism words and had her plug her nose. She leaned back into the current and I did my best to help her under and back out gracefully. When she stood back upright I looked at the water streaming down her face and wondered... Could it be that this is the very water that streamed down our Savior's face so many years ago?