Remember when Mike suprised me with tickets for Valentine’s to the Casting Crowns’ concert. We had a fabulous night out with friends and praised our God with one of my favorite bands.
Anyhow.
At the concert they showed some pictures of a trip the band took with Compassion International doing work in Africa with fresh water well drilling. They showed a beautiful and moving video of children walking MILES each day with a couple gallons of water from little mud puddles. I was moved. But complacent.
Saturday evening, Mike said, “The well is going to be chlorinated on Monday morning and we won’t have drinking water for a day and a half. Maybe we can go to my Mom’s for a while.” City girls have blessed little comprehension for such things as wells. At least this city girl.
So Monday afternoon they showed up and pumped chlorine into our well. And then we ran the faucets in the house till it sucked up the chlorine to clean our pipes. I can’t begin to tell you all the spiritual analogies that I’ve been having about all this. But suffice it to say that we could not drink said water, we’d be very ill.
So, we ate at my precious MIL’s for the last two nights. The kids and I. Mike is chisel plowing around the clock. Literally.
So last night, I opened up the new water hose, hualed it around back and started dumping the chlorinated water out of our well. It needed to drain for two hours. So I left for dinner with kids in tow. To return, ready for a drink at my house.
Nope. Got home and there had been a kink in the hose. It needed more time. How long had it been kinked? Had it been two hours? So I drained everything again.
This morning, Mike woke me up and said that when he got home last night (I had been in bed for a long while)and took his shower it was still chlorinated. I needed to drain it all again. Run the dishwasher, empty the hotwater heater, run the washing machine flush the faucets, and spigets. Don’t drink the water.
So now that this is a novel. I am listening to the water going in the washer, dishwasher and reheat in the hot water tank. All for a drink of fresh water. You have no idea. Maybe you do. I didn’t.
I’m listening, Lord. I can’t be complacent about the depravity in others.
Lee,
Love the postings! Found you via Beth Moore’s website. My husband is going to help me set up a blog spot, so I’ve been surfing from Beth’s page.
I can relate to the water/drinking/well posting. I used to be a social worker in rural eastern NC. I will never forget pulling up to an elderly gentleman’s “house” (that’s being generous). He had a hand pump for water in the back yard. Yes, you read that correctly, he used to pump that little thing up and down and water would come out – just like in the “old prairie days”. However, his hand pump had broken and the hardware store didn’t carry the parts anymore (duh!). His outhouse had been blown over in the fierce storm the month before. He had one electrical outlet. He had no refrigerator. He had a two-element stove top, and one of the elements was burned out. I could not get this one-legged gentleman to go to the rest home that would meet all of this needs because this was the home that he and his wife lived in their entire married life, birth children in, raised children in, and the house he was in when he was nursing his wife and she died. So, everytime I need a practical application perspective of how much I truly have, I can still see that old sharecroppers shack. That’s when I get back down on my knees and give thanks instead of asking.
Hope you don’t mind my rambling back at you. There seems to be a therapeutic bend to all this blogging siestas.
Peace,
Kim Feth in Apex, NC
feth@nc.rr.com
Lee,
Please enlighten me about why you are chlorinating the well. I’ve never heard of such a thing and I’ve lived in the country a loooonnnngggg time.
Sweet friend, you and I both have children who have no idea the life/water they would have lived with if it were not for the grace of our Father. Thank you Jesus for being living water. And thank you Jesus for Lee.