The Water Fight – John Dickson

I went to school at Texas A&M University in the early 1970′s. In the Corp of Cadets, I had some wild experiences, one of which was called the “water fight.” These water fights were not just a few guys squirting each other with water guns or cups of water. These were semi-organized water wars, on an apocalyptic scale, involving thousands of cadets and great rivers of water. They would start with an upperclassman ordering a freshman to stand on top of his dining room table during the evening meal and shout at the top of his lungs, “Water fight!” At that announcement, thousands of cadets would leap to their feet and pour out of the dining hall and race back to their dorms. In their rooms, they would grab their three-gallon metal trash can and head back out in front of their dorm. Selected crews of cadets would fill 55-gallon garbage cans with water from the shower stalls and pour the water out the windows. We would gather under those windows and fill our trash cans under the waterfall cascading down from four stories of dorm shower rooms. Then we lined up in two opposing skirmish lines directed by upperclassmen armed with bull horns, on the roofs of the dorms. When the command to “charge” was given, thousands of cadets would raise a war cry and hurl themselves at the opposing side with reckless abandon, loosing a tsunami of water at each other. The wall of water knocked people down and swept others off their feet.

The melee of fun and frolic continued as cadets ran back to the waterfall to refill their trash cans and enter the charge again. It was noisy, clamorous, wild, undignified, exciting and tremendously fun, just like in heaven when the roaring voice shouted out “Halal! in Revelation 19. Maybe there was no water involved in the heavenly celebration, but the excitement level was certainly similar. What fun they have in heaven!

On earth, however, we seem to limit our times of halal to the secular side of our lives. Exuberant praise is, in fact, a normal human behavior. When we receive some long-awaited good news – Jimmy passed his algebra exam – we wave our hands in the air and shout, “Way to go, Jimmy!” When we win the football game, we high five and yell and act wild. Only in church and in the public library do we restrain ourselves. We humans have the natural tendency to get stagnant in our religion and to get our worship down into a set pattern – something manageable. We don’t like surprises. When we become sedentary, our zeal cools off and we become less and less effective. Our devotion gravitates toward our liturgy (whether denominational or charismatic) instead of our living relationship with God. It’s all right that the dead don’t halal, but as for the Church, it’s time.

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