WATER!

Happy Thanksgiving!  May you be granted a attitude of gratitude, all your life long.  If you are having trouble being thankful, I would suggest you start with a hot shower and these facts:
There are over 7 billion people on our beautiful planet Earth.  Of all those people, if you have access to hot running water you are one of the 5% in the world who does.  That's about 350 million people who do and over 6 billion who do not. 
If that is too big of a number to wrap your brain around, try over 6 million Americans who are homeless many of them children. Then there is the whole issue of clean drinking water.  Estimates of over 7 million people do not have access to clean water.  Check out Unicef's web page on the need.  http://www.unicefusa.org/work/water/

So begin your day with giving thanks for clean hot water.  Then imagine going for a job interview with no way to be clean.  The desperate need for clean water makes me think of the famed poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink

Today you could make a commitment to help others have access to this vital resource.  A thankful heart overflows with gratitude and then becomes an instrument for change in our world.  Jesus meets a woman at a well and asks her for a drink.  From this request comes a powerful dialogue about who Jesus is and what he brings to the world: 
¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but 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.” (John 4:13-14)

Could you be a spring of water gushing up to give life to others?  I met Tom Logan of the Shallow Well Program of the Marion Medical Mission at a Presbytery meeting in 1992.  At the time he was trying to raise funds to provide a truck for the Embangweni, Malawi Hospital and the shallow well program. During the year the truck was used as an ambulance and when the mission team arrived it was their transport to outlying villages where wells were to be dug. I remember when the goal was to provide 300 wells during a two week mission trip.  They were successful and last year the goal was 2500 wells and they surpassed that goal!  They are now providing shallow wells in Tanzania and Zambia and the mission has a fleet of trucks.   Tom often quotes Matthew 19:23 "... with man this is impossible but with God all things are possible!"
http://marionmedical.org/

 

I dedicate this blog the many people whose hearts are filled with Thanksgiving and

 to all those who bring a cup of cold water to those who thirst

and a hot shower for those who have none.  Blessings, Linda