water is life part 3

Exerpt #3 from Richard Stearn's book The Hole in our Gospel.

"Last year my wife, Renee, was asked to speak to a group on the topic of clean water. Because she has not had the opportunity to visit as many World Vision water projects in the field as I have, she felt she needed to get a little firsthand experience. She decided to go through a whole day without turning on the water in our house. While going without a shower, not brushing her teeth, and forsaking her morning coffee were daunting enough, she was determined to carry it a bit further, so she set off with her Rubbermaid bucket toward the lake two miles away. She then dipped into the lake and started home, carrying perhaps just three or four gallons in her bucket.

By the time she got home, she was exhausted and less than a gallon of water was left in her bucket, as much of it had sloshed out along the way. It had been a terrible experience- made worse by the fact that a neighbor driving by saw her schlepping the bucket and asked if she had started a cleaning business! Renee found the whole experience quite challenging, and she was able to speak to her audience a few days later with the passion that only comes from experience.

Now, this little imaginary dilemma I took you through earlier may sound a bit amusing as you think about how absolutely dependent you and your family are on water, but let me add a more sinister dimension. Imagine that the water you fetched from the lake was teeming with deadly bacteria, parasites, and waterborne diseases- that are literally killing you. This is the grim reality for about 1.2 billion people in our world today. As many as 5 million people die every year of water-related illnesses. A child dies every fifteen seconds of a waterborne disease. This creates a no-win situation for millions of parents in our world today- they can watch helplessly as their children die for lack of water, or they can watch them die from diarrhea, because the only water they have is tainted."