A clean toast to: Charity Water

I’m writing this at just before 8 o’clock in the morning on a Thursday.  Usually, I’ve been at work for half an hour already, putting on the hot water to serve up some morning tea and kids coming in for various and sundry issues.  But not today.  I’m not ill or injured, there is no snow or ice outside.  No flooding (which is more than I can say for neighboring states to the south!)  Nope, not me.  Got a call around six this morning informing us that a city water main had busted last night (no wonder we lost pressure!) and since our fair town was under a “boil only” ban, school had been cancelled for today. 

Can you hear the children screaming with glee??  (Can you hear parents moaning?)

Clean water—OH! the things we take for granted!  Many, well…most, are not so fortunate.  There are places where people trudge for hours EACH DAY just to provide clean (a relative term) water for their families.  Dysentery is rampant, and the infant/child mortality rate is staggering.  One of life’s essentials, clean water, is denied to so many…

…which brings me to an even more devastating thought.  Just as there are deserts and dirty water throughout the world, so also are there spiritual wastelands, sometimes in our own backyard.  Now, it’s one thing to have no water—you dry up and die.  It’s quite another thing to have only dirty water tainted with, well, if you’re eating while reading this, I’d better not elaborate.  The end result is still death.

Spiritually speaking, the Church is supposed to deal with both.  Our mission is to bring not only water, but clear and clean water at that—the Living Water of Christ purified from pollutants like offenses, unforgiveness, and theologically destructive error.  And this is achieved only by the filtering effect of the Holy Spirit in our lives, working through our individual relationship with Jesus and His Word, and our ongoing fellowship with His people.  This is especially important for the “infants and children” in the Church, who tend to be more susceptible to spiritually wasting diseases.

“But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

And for more information about helping provide clean drinking water for others, please check out Charity Water!  They are AWESOME!

John 4:14  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.