Tomorrow is World Water Day. Below are some words I shared at The Living Water Project dinner last August. I am hoping that in some small way, these words will strike a chord with you, and that you will choose to celebrate World Water Day by helping to save lives. There are many organizations in the world who minister through supplying clean water to those in need. I am just partial to this one.
“Nashville
Tennessee is the filthiest city on the North American continent,” Dr. Berrien Lindsley 1873.
Between 1833 and 1873, Nashville had several outbreaks of a water-borne disease called Cholera. There are documented cases of stout, grown men getting up, having breakfast, going to work and being dead by sundown. Children died in far less time. In the 1833 epidemic, there were 88 prisoners in the state penitentiary, all but 3 were stricken by the disease. Former President James K. Polk died in the 1849 epidemic after battling cholera for 2 weeks. The day he was buried in the Nashville City Cemetery, 34 others were buried, all of whom died of cholera. Hundreds upon hundreds of lives lost for want of clean water. By 1873, the connection between unclean water and this deadly disease was beginning to be understood.
Maya
Angelou is credited with saying, “do the best you can do until you know
better. When you know better, do
better.” By the late 19c, cholera had
been eradicated in the United States.
Still, in the 21c, cholera continues to cause deaths in other parts of
the world. Lives lost for want of clean
water. As a lover of history and a
teller of stories, it seems to me that the only proper response to the lessons
of the past is to heed them and use them for the common good. As one of the newest members of the Living
Water Project board, I am grateful to be part of a group that goes about
showing the love of Jesus by using knowledge gained from lessons of the past to
benefit others.
I am
going to be a bit personally honest here.
I am a very geographically-challenged person. Several years ago, our family went on a trip
out West. As we were planning I
excitedly asked what wonderful things we would see in Iowa. I am not a financially minded person. If I write a check for $35 I subtract $50
from my check register. I realize that
possibly the most alarming words in that statement are check and check
register. I am not very tech savvy. At board meetings everyone else opens up
their laptops. I have a notebook of
hand-made paper and a purple ink pen. I
don’t know anything about water purification, how well pumps work, or where the
best place is to dig.
But, this
I do know. Proximity has nothing to do
with who my neighbor is. I know that
people all over the world just want to be able to care for their families and
keep their children healthy. I know
clean water is vital to that pursuit.
So, I
invite you to celebrate with us the almost 400 wells that have been dug and are
saving lives. I invite you to celebrate
with us the opportunities that lie ahead.
Some of you are geography people.
You love maps and globes and traveling, so you get excited about all the
different places Living Water has wells.
Some of you are financial folks and you might be searching information
for how much these opportunities will cost.
Some of you are engineers and tech people and so you find yourselves
fascinated by all the different methods used to garner that God-given clean
water so desperately needed. And, some
of you are looking for how many people will be affected, how children’s lives
will be saved.
Will you
join me in contributing the amount of your last water bill to The Living Water
Project to celebrate World Water Day? Such
donations are the reasons that there are fewer children in the world dying of
water-borne diseases.
www.livingwaterwells.org
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