Water: The Scary Statistics
By: Kristen L. McNulty
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This week I saw a headline in a magazine that startled it me. It said that "one child dies every twenty seconds from diseases related to drinking dirty water."
Let me repeat that. One child dies every 20 seconds from diseases related to drinking dirty water. So roughly since this show has began, 270 children have died because the water they're drinking is dirty.
Am I the only one who feels sick to my stomach about such a sad truth. Every day, families around the world lose their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters because the water they have to drink is filthy.
That's a pretty heavy truth that has to sink in. Especially since we feel so far removed from it all. Yes we see it on TV, but we don't face the consequences on a daily basis. How many of us listening to this show have lost someone we love because the only water we could provide for them was filled with bacteria and disease? I'm sure that number is small.
So where does that leave us? Living in luxury it's very easy to turn a blind eye, especially because the problem seems so big that a solution is just beyond our grasp. Or so we think.
I'm not claiming that I know the answer to fixing the world's water supply. But I do know that we all can help.
Most of you are familiar with the band Jars of Clay I'm sure. Well they also heard the same statistics that we're all hearing, but instead of just hearing, they decided to do something. So they looked into what it would take to bring clean drinking water to Africans and guess what they found out? For $1 they could provide clean drinking water to someone in Africa for a whole year!
That's for less than the price that it costs us to buy a bottle of water at the store, they can provide clean drinking water to someone for a whole year.
So they've started an organization called the Blood Water Mission and through it, they are building wells across Africa that are saving thousands of lives every year.
And the best part about it is we can all get involved. This hour 180 children may have died because they don't have clean drinking water, but this hour we can also all save hundreds of lives. Think about it. If everyone listening right now gave even a dollar, we could turn thousands of lives around.
Earlier on the show Brian McLaren talked about the need for Christians to start really living out their faith and I'm convinced that if we all did so, the world would be a different place. Yes we can't solve every problem that exists. But a child dying every 20 seconds from something that's preventable? That's a tragedy and one we can no longer do something about.
For more information on the blood water mission, visit bloodwatermission.com
This devotional was aired as a part of the Making A Difference Christian Radio Show.