The Waters of Life
Throughout most of my life, one of the most important commodities has been oil, next to gold. Wars have been fought over it. The economy has gone up and down based on the price of gas. Yet, as we live deeper into the 21st century, oil may not be as important as… a glass of water.
I remember my father scolding me for spending too much time in the shower when I was a teenager. Water seemed cheap and abundant back then. In California we watered our lawns almost daily and filled our swimming pools and didn’t worry about where the water was coming from.
As I began to travel to Third World countries, I would notice lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, that were heavily polluted. In Cairo, Egypt, I could not believe all the plastic filling the Nile. In other places people were dying from poisoned water. Our own country isn’t exempt from some of this.
Water is the lifeblood of the human race and it is also the energy that moves the universe. It is probably not a coincidence that at least half of our body is made up of water. From plants to animals to computers and the “The Cloud”, water is what makes the world go round.
I recently read that Microsoft opened a data center in central Mexico last year. As a result, power outages have become more frequent and water outages, which used to last days, now last weeks. From Mexico to Ireland, water is key in the A.I. world as the data centers need vast amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers.
In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa data centers are further taxing the national grid. Similar concerns have surfaced in Brazil, Britain, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Spain. This is in addition to the stress already put on our water supply by climate change (whose existence is flatly denied in some political corners).
As companies move to use our water, people are affected as water becomes scarcer. Many communities face the additional challenge to provide clean drinking water that isn’t polluted by chemicals.
What we know now is that we are living in an age of a fragile water supply, strained by many different demands. Is it possible, or even likely, that future wars will be fought over water?
As Christians we read water as a symbol for life. Most of us, when we were young, were held in our parents’ arms and brought to the font to be baptized with water. We were always a child of God, but through the waters of baptism we became part of the body of Christ - the Church.
Water appears many times in the Bible. Jesus, dying on the cross, says he is thirsty but he is refused water. In the parable of The Last Judgment, Jesus tells us that when you give someone a glass of water, you are giving it to him. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life.”
The good news is that our thirst can be quenched with the waters of life.
MEH