Living WaterSample

Clara Mwemba, 12, Zambia, carrying a relative. ©2014 World Vision, photo by Jon Warren

Water is life

Jesus turns the water into wine – John 2

At first glance, it seems strange that Jesus’ first recorded miracle was so frivolous. Turning water into wine? At a party where the guests may have had enough to drink already (2:10)?

Perhaps out of deference to his mother, Jesus intervened. He instructed the servants to fill six stone jars. These weren’t just any jars. They were ritual purification jars; the water they normally held was used to wash away impurity. In Jesus’ hands, they served an altogether different purpose: bringing new life to the party.

Jesus’ miracle made no more sense to the master of ceremonies than it does to us. It was extravagant. Excessive. And that’s the point. The jars of choice wine became a picture of God’s abundant grace. Jesus did not just come to meet our spiritual needs. He came that we might flourish in every way. He came to offer hope and joy—for this life and the next.

The effects of dirty water are well known to the people of Haalumba in southern Zambia. Diarrhea and cholera were common. Children like Clara, now 12, had to walk long distances to fetch water that might kill them—that is, if the journey didn’t get to them first.

“It was very dangerous,” Clara says, recalling the place where she used to draw water. “It was very slippery. You could fall and drown.”

In Haalumba, as in other parts of the world, collecting water is widely seen as women’s work. As a result, education was but a distant dream for Clara. “I had to carry heavy buckets,” she says. “I would be too tired to go to school.”

Dirty water has another effect on rural communities—one perhaps more subtle but no less damaging: it keeps people from experiencing the fullness of God’s love for them.

“No water leads to a lack of spirituality,” says Isaac Samuete, a water coordinator in World Vision’s Hamaundu project area, which includes Clara’s village. “The family is never together. The mother is always drawing water.”

New life for a party or a life full of promise, Jesus came to provide both. And water figures prominently. Inviting people to experience the living water of eternal life goes hand in hand with providing access to safe drinking water now.