Food for Thought: Water, Symbol of Both Life and Destruction

While my husband and I lived in the Boston area, I was privileged to help write and provide teacher workshops on a water conservation curriculum for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority called Water Wisdom. Part of the purpose of the curriculum is to provide activities that can help teachers and students learn how to use water more responsibly and to protect its sources by not allowing it to become polluted or misused.

Having clean water is essential to life. Having too much water, in the form of floods or broken dams, can be deadly. It is incumbent upon us all to preserve and protect the world’s water supply. It is also our responsibility to help areas of the world, where water is difficult to access, to create the infrastructure to provide it more efficiently. Today, one in nine people lack access to safe water and one in three people lack access to a toilet.

Women are disproportionately affected by the water crisis, as they are often responsible for collecting water for the family’s use. Women and children spend hours walking to the nearest source of water and carrying it back. This takes time away from work, school and caring for family. The lack of water and sanitation locks women in a cycle of poverty. Wells and pumps need to be drilled and installed where the people live. Empowering women is critical to solving the water crisis. When women have access to safe water at home, they can pursue things beyond water collection and their traditional roles. They have time to work and add to their household income. I urge each of us to find an organization through which to help alleviate the world water crisis.

The Bible often uses water as a symbol of faith, salvation, and provision. Water is essential to our physical living just as Jesus is essential to our spiritual living!

“But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4:14

“Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.” Isaiah 12:3