The Marathon Runner Who Crawled to the Water Station

In 2019, during the Badwater 135 ultramarathon across Death Valley, runner Shannon Farar-Griefer collapsed at mile 72. Temperatures had reached 130 degrees. Her crew had fallen behind, and for nearly a mile she had no water, no shade, nothing but cracked asphalt and white desert heat. Witnesses said she crawled the last hundred yards to the aid station on her hands and knees, and when someone finally placed a cup of water in her hands, she wept. Not from pain. From relief. She later told reporters, "I have never wanted anything in my life the way I wanted that water."

David knew that thirst. Writing from the wilderness of Judah — not from a comfortable study, but from actual desert — he used the only language that fit: "My soul thirsts for You; my whole body longs for You in a dry and parched land where there is no water."

But here is what separates David's psalm from a survival story. Shannon crawled toward water that might run out. David thirsted for the living God whose love, he declared, "is better than life." And when the Almighty met him in that barren place, David didn't just drink — he feasted. His soul was satisfied "as with the richest of foods."

The desert didn't destroy David's faith. It revealed what his soul had always needed. Sometimes God leads us into dry seasons not to punish us, but to teach us that He alone is the water we cannot live without.