SITTING in the garden with mild Covid symptoms, I watched as our peas and beans dried up and withered, and the grass turned a sickly yellow. And that was before the hosepipe ban that is now imposed in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. In these seemingly endless weeks of drought, I have been reminded of the landscape of biblical Israel. Land of milk and honey it may have been, but the Promised Land was also often a dry land, with areas of desert and the Dead Sea. Access to water was a priority, and still is.

The need for water has hugely influenced the language of scripture and, hence, of Christian prayer and liturgy. From Herbert Howells’s languid organ introduction to his setting of Psalm 42, “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks”, to Stuart Townend’s “Your Love (Pour Over Me)”, we naturally think of the spiritual life in terms of a longing for refreshment, and flow, of God as shade from the heat, keeping us under the shadow of his wings.

Baptism in water is immersion in the life of God. Hell is hot, we are told, with no drop of water to cool the tongue — which prompts the question whether we should imagine heaven as cool and shady, or merely temperate. Or perhaps we are not meant to know.

Scripture gives hints and guesses of divine abundance. In the vision of Ezekiel 47, the threshold of the temple is built over an endless source of flowing, healing water, “deep enough to swim in”, that cleanses the whole land and brings it to life as it flows into the sea. Salt water becomes sweet and fresh, and on the banks of the river are the trees with their fruit and healing leaves. The vision provides the imagery for Revelation’s heavenly city.

Climate and landscape often form the background to our sense of the divine. I can see why in hot, humid parts of Asia, teeming with plant and insect life, Buddhist philosophy might speak of Nirvana: a blissful snuffing out of desire and striving.

And yet, of course, religious faith travels beyond geographical and climatological limits. There are Buddhists in temperate cities, just as there are Christians in Scandinavia, Nigeria, and Chicago. Even when it is raining, we can understand and experience spiritual dryness and a sense of the desert. The metaphor crosses easily over from one reality to another, and we have hymn- and song-writers to fill in any gaps: “The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows for our play”.

So much of our talk, prayer, and experience of God comes to us through metaphor. But then metaphor comes back into reality. Our parched landscape urges us not only to pray for spiritual refreshment, but to take care of the precious water that we have.