Count Your Blessings #45 – Clean Water

Every day I drink water, every day it’s crystal clear and tastes great. I don’t have to think about it, I just go to the utility turn on the tap on the water filter and out it comes. I don’t really even need the water filter it just tastes a bit better that way.

I don’t have to walk for my water.

I don’t have to boil my water.

I don’t have to put a purifying tablet in it.

I don’t have to worry about disease.

I don’t have to worry whether the well will be empty.

What a luxury.

We can so often look at the things that we use everyday and miss the fact that they are a luxury. Pure clean water is indeed a luxury. There are millions of people all over the world for whom water is a constant concern. Apparently 1.2 billion of us don’t have access to safe drinking water. Water is even the cause of war in some parts of the world. I have none of those concerns I just go to the tap and there it is.

Jesus talked about a relationship with Him being like having ‘living water’, removing the need to ever be thirsty:

 ¹Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed ²(although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptising). They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. ³So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee.

    ⁴To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.

    ⁷A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

    ⁹The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)

    ¹⁰Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

    ¹¹The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this “living water’? ¹²Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

    ¹³Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. ¹⁴Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst–not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”

    ¹⁵The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!”

John 4

Water is a symbol of life itself, without water there is no life. I need water to live; I need ‘living water’ to really live. It’s a blessing and an honour to have both.