By Dustin Moody
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“But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” John 4:14 (NLT)
Imagine waking one morning to find your child ill, weak and dehydrated. There are no doctors or pharmacies in your village. You walk to the outskirts of town to collect water from a rain basin: a glorified bucket at the bottom of a hill frequented by locals and animals and often used for bathing by both. Unknown to you, this is the original source of the illness.
The symptoms worsen, the dehydration is becoming more and more apparent, and you contemplate more serious measures of survival. The nearest source of “clean” water—a relative term in your corner of the world—is a small creek half a day away.
That water supply also has problems. Sewage and arsenic and fluoride are too potent even for the fish to survive. But this is your only option, and this is your child suffering.
After walking for an entire day, you arrive home only to find the child taken by the dehydration and lying breathless in the bed.
You’re too late.
Compounding your sorrows, imagine laying that child to rest without the comfort of ever tasting the Living Water and its spring of eternal life.
For the estimated 1.1 billion people around the world without access to clean water, this scenario is an all too frequent and entirely preventable tragedy. The World Health Organization estimated in 2002 that 17 percent of the world’s population lacked improved water sources, and 2.6 billion were without basic sanitation.
In addition to this basic physical need, many of these individuals lack access to the basic spiritual need: the opportunity to hear about Christ’s living water from God’s Word. More than 193 million people still do not have adequate Scripture, denying them access to the ultimate spring of life.
Jerry and Donna Ohs want to help meet both of these needs.
Click here to find out how in Part 2...
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