Posting over at The Lulu Tree this week…

World Water Day is this month, March 22ed.

As I write this, the kitchen sink a few yards away is dripping and I am feeling bad that we are wasting water. It reminds me of the time a waterline broke deep beneath our driveway and a river of water flowed out underground for weeks before we realized what had happened, causing a crisis that necessitated the use of a backhoe (and resulted in a sewer line being dug up, but we don’t talk about that).

My negative experiences with water have all been of the too much water variety, and none of them have threatened my health or my life. That’s not the case for too many people.

Worldwide, one out of every ten people does not have access to safe water. That’s twice the population of the United States, who daily worry if they will have water to drink and if the water they do drink will make them ill.

Worldwide, women and children spend 125 million hours a day carrying water.  Hours spent transporting water in jars, in buckets, in old gasoline cans. They come to well, to the spring, to the pump weary after hours spent walking through hazardous ground, baby in tow, children weak with hunger lugging jugs of water for miles every day. Water that might well leave them sick, even dying. Why all of this, these hours of work?

Water is life. Without water, we perish.

I pray for those without access to safe water, for strength for those who must carry life-sustaining water in their weary arms every day. And I thank God for the little blue tablets that we are able to provide for our Lulu family in Uganda, little blue tablets that make the water they drink safe and prevent deadly outbreaks of Typhoid. These pills must seem like a miracle to those who have wondered daily when the next waterborne illness might strike.

Water works miracles.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes, how a rainstorm makes the desert bloom. I’ve watched my children pour water on the seeds they’ve planted deep, and seen the wonder in their eyes at the miracle of tiny seedlings pushing up through the earth. I’ve seen the way green things thrive at the edges of a flowing stream, the bloom of life following its trail. I’ve seen the news stories, deep wells drilled into dry ground and the miracle of water flowing, the life that water brings to a community.

Water brings life. Where water flows, life flourishes. (Tweet this)

Years ago there was a woman who walked for her water, as so many do today. She had crossed the hot soil with her earthen jar, not early in the morning as most would do but mid-afternoon when the sun was hot and the crowd was thin and the judging eyes would perhaps be few. And there she met a man who offered her living water. A man who knew all her broken places but still loved her, a man who spoke truth gently to her….Read the rest at The Lulu Tree