Count your blessing: Wednesday 18 February (Ash Wednesday)

By Rt Rev John Chalmers

To us water is a given not a privilege and yet across the world today 750 million people (almost two and half times the population of the USA) live without access to a safe source of drinking water.

On a recent trip to Nigeria and South Sudan it was striking to note how many people, (mostly women) still have to travel many miles to collect their water supply, but with no guarantee that it is safe to drink.

From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is shot through with references to water as the first essential of life and as the symbolic substance of new life in Christ. In my own thinking, when I see a child die because she slakes her thirst at a stagnant pond, I cannot separate the relative value of the material substance that flows from the taps in my house and the living water which Christ speaks of in St John 4: 10.

Christians cannot rest until drinking water and living water are shared across the world but much has to be done to bring this about. The places where the problems are most acute are far off the beaten track. They are in countries caught up in civil war or blighted by political corruption, so the challenge of breaking through and transforming the lives of the world's most vulnerable people involves big things such as peace-making and nation building.

Pray with me that across the whole earth people will have access to the springs of the water of life.

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Daily Reflection

We often run water until it's the right temperature. But 748 million people don't have access to safe water. That's the combined population of Brazil, Russia, the UK, US and Zimbabwe.

Give 10p every time you run water today.

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