Water of Life

Two weeks ago I showed a youtube filmwww.tearfund.org/en/…/olympic_rowers_in_africa_challenge/?d… in the Cathedral of the Chambers brothers – Peter and Richard, both Olympic medallists – on a visit to Uganda to experience the life of a Ugandan family and in particular the need to collect water twice each day, work done by the two girls in the family. Their walk, twice each day, was 3kms each way to and from the lake down and up a steep and often slippery path. As Peter and Richard said, this was as hard as anything that they do in training.

You only realize how much you rely on water until you no longer have access to it. Yesterday men came to replace an air-conditioning unit in the kitchen that constantly was causing a trip in the electricity. In making a new hole in the wall, they burst a water pipe so the water supply was turned off overnight and they haven’t yet returned to fix it. So no water to shower in, to flush toilets, to wash the dishes … and it’s 42 degrees outside. Thankfully we have some bottled water to drink. In a land where water is scarce and getting it is hard work, the invitation and promise of Jesus is immensely attractive and powerful:  “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”