Sometime Island(s)
(It’s raining in Austin today, but our nasty drought still lingers. This seemed appropriate for today.)
Just northwest of Austin is a gorgeous body of water known as Lake Travis. Lake Travis, created by the damming of the Colorado River in 1941, is 63.75 miles long, has a maximum width of 4.5 miles and covers 18,929 acres. It plays host to jet skiing, water skiing, boating, sailing, swimming, scuba diving, fishing, and is lined by dozens of beautiful resorts and restaurants. Austin residents know Lake Travis as one of their favorite year-round playgrounds.
But that’s not why it was created. Lake Travis was designed to be a giant reservoir; a huge holding tank that allows the flow of the Colorado River downstream to the Gulf of Mexico to be restricted. The Colorado east of Austin flows through some rich farm and ranch lands—land that desperately needs water. Creatively thinking engineers in the late 1930s figured out that if they could slow down flow of the Colorado, then they could build up a water supply to help out those farmers when they needed it. When the state gets dry and the farmers need the water, engineers can release some to the landowners downstream. As a result, Lake Travis is not a constant-level lake. Its level can rise or fall anywhere from 10-50 feet in the course of year or two. This, of course, drives land and dock owners around the lake crazy, as they have to adjust their docks and waterfront property to the ever-changing water levels. It also means that islands will appear and disappear on Lake Travis, depending on the water level.
Sometime Island is a small section of dirt and rock that first appears whenever the lake gets to be more than 10-15 feet below full. (And as of July 17, 2013 at 8 AM, Lake Travis is 55 feet BELOW full.) It’s located just within view of a major highway so residents and travelers alike who use the road can easily see it. Some clever person nicknamed it Sometime Island because sometimes it’s there and sometimes it isn’t. At the time of this writing, Lake Travis is getting low and Sometime Island has been exposed for over a year. That always leads to a healthy growth of weeds and plants on the island, which only adds to the “charm” of the island. Occasionally, a real estate For Sale sign will show up on Sometime Island. Pretty funny.
I often point to Lake Travis as a metaphor for how God uses us and our resources. There are times you’re going to be very full—you’ll feel well-funded, well-provided for and very secure. You’ll have much more than enough. But then needs are going to come up around you. Drought is going to come to someone’s life. God is going to ask you to send what he has given you to someone else who needs it more than you do. And when you obey him, when you release your resources, your level of more than enough is going to drop. You won’t be anywhere near empty, but you’ll have less than you did. And as that pattern repeats itself in your life, your level of provision will decrease even more. Islands of scarcity might begin to pop up in your life. You might feel less secure, less protected and less able to enjoy what you have. When that happens, remember why God gives us more than enough in the first place. We, like Lake Travis, are reservoirs. We really enjoy being full, but that’s not why we were created. We were made to be holding tanks for God’s resources; he gives them to us to hold only until someone really needs them. And as we release what God gives us, as we begin to see our provision levels drop, God promises to always resupply us. We will never run dry.
In my lifetime I’ve seen Lake Travis set records on both ends of the spectrum—from flood stage to record lows with Sometime Islands popping up everywhere. And whichever end of the spectrum the lake is at, I know that it won’t be too long before the other will return. If the lake is low, the rains will eventually come. They always do. If the lake is full, then I can expect the lake level to start dropping soon. That’s what it was made for. And when it does, when Sometime Island pops up, I can rest in the fact that somewhere downstream thirsty crops and livestock are being watered, and some farmer or rancher is smiling.
