water is life part 2

Continuing today with an excerpt from The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns.

"Well, think about it. You would wake up wanting to use the toilet, take your hot shower, brush your teeth, swallow those vitamins, and fix breakfast- but you can't. What would you do? At first, you would be irritated by the minor inconvenience of having no showeres, toilets, dishwasher, or washing machine- until it started to dawn on you that this is far mroe serious- at threat, actually, to your health, your family, even your survival. Finding a way to get water would begin to consum your life. Without food you can live sometimes for weeks, but without water? Life as you know it would be transformed- and not in a good way.

Where I live, we are fortunate to have a wonderful lake just about 2 miles away, so if I knew I was going to be without water, I could begin to plan ahead to organize some water fetching. On foot, it would take about 2 hours round-trip to go fetch water to use for drinking and some rudimentary bathing, but 30 gallons of water weighs about 250 pounds. I checked my water bill and learned that my family uses about 300 hundred gallons a day. That would weigh more than a ton and would require 50 round-trips to the lake each day, so my family might have to reduce their water consumption a bit. Reducing to 30 gallons would be a 90 percent reduction, but carrying 30 gallons of water two miles would still take about 5 or 6 trips a day, carrying 50 pounds each time, consuming about 10 hours of hard labor. If you think it's inconvenient to go to the gym to work out every morning, try lugging 50 pounds of water back to your house so you can brush your teeth and have a sponge bath- then try making that trip 5 times. Now, if you had to work this routine into your schedule every day and still get everyone off to work or school on time, you would have to begin your treks in the wee hours of the morning. Washing your clothes and dishes, let alone your own body, would become an overwhelming task."