Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Drought

In the past several days we have finally had some rain. But the drought has gotten me thinking.

We have become so independent from weather conditions, we have lost our sense of dependence on God. What do we do if we completely run out of water?

One municipality announced that they had only a 60-day supply of water. If it doesn’t rain in two months, then they have no water. Until our recent rains, it looked like that could happen. One town is running tanker trucks all day, hauling water from a neighboring community and dumping it in their reservoir. And the water level is still going down.

Duke Power has created a series of pipes to pump water from the Dan River into Belews Lake. They need the water for their steam generating station.

When the reservoirs are empty, then we resort to extraordinary means. We haul water from another town. We pipe water from a river. We can even use wells until they run dry.

We are not used to hardship due to weather. We go a couple of months without rain, and we start to get…scared. We take water for granted. But countless times in history, regions have gone through famines – years without rain or snow.

How do we change the weather? How do we fix that? Suddenly we realize that this is something we can’t fix. Only God can control the weather. We have to ask him for rain. God has many ways of making us remember that we have to count on him. We depend on him for everything we need for life. A serious drought brings it home. We have to call upon him.

A drought also helps us see how important water is for life. Makes you want to help provide clean water around the world, doesn’t it. Let’s help drill some wells in Africa.