Christian Living

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I’m going to share a family memory, then reveal a family secret.

When I was child, one week of summer was reserved for a “gathering of kin” at my paternal grandparent’s farm in east Tennessee. It was our version of “Goodnight John Boy”, our answer to The Walton’s, as parents and children, aunts and uncles and cousins galore came together in this emerald valley tucked between the misty, slate blue mountains of Appalachia.

My grandparent’s house had a tin roof that begged for rainy nights and a pot bellied stove in the living room. In the adjacent farm buildings, there was a cow named Ellen, a rooster called Pinky and an Arnold Ziffle contender-of-a-pig who answered to Corky. Deer, wild turkeys, bobcats and the occasional black bear hung out in the woodsy borders of the land, but never bothered humans.

We kids spent hours running wild through the dandelions and clover that carpeted the rolling, sun-soaked hills. We splashed in the crystal creek that babbled through the property, and went “sledding” down a dirt embankment on old mattresses. At night, a million fireflies gave light to the pitch blackness that settled over the farm, as did a roaring bonfire that roasted our marshmallows and hotdogs. On nights when we didn’t have a bonfire, Grandma and Grandpa handed out frosty Orange Crushes and chocolate Moon Pies.

Those summer trips “to the country”, as we called them, built some wonderful memories.

Water came from a spring-fed well. Today, we won’t even brush our teeth with it, but back then, it was considered sweet, pure and perfectly drinkable.

Only one family member disagreed with that, and annually showed up with jugs of “city water” that she had filled from the tap in her kitchen. This “safe” water was for her and her immediate branch of the family tree.

Now to blow the lid off a long-guarded secret.

Every year, my mother, sister, grandmother and aunt slipped from bed in the middle of the night. Giggling like school girls about to prank the principal, and tip-toeing around in their night gowns, they would dump out the city water and refill the jugs with clear, cold H2O— straight from the wishin’ well.

The water-sensitive relative guzzled spring water all week, never realizing that she’d been a victim of the ‘ol switch-a-roo.

Some people would say the city water was contaminated with dangerous chemicals; others would say the spring water was tainted with microscopic frog droppings. Either way, it brings up a question:

Do we really know what’s in the water we drink?

There’s an old expression—“drank it up like water”—that’s usually tacked onto a negative statement. “That salesman told them all kinds of lies—and they drank it up like water.” “That man is nothing but a sweet-talking cad—and she drinks it up like water.”

The expression is meant to imply that someone is either gullible or chooses to believe everything they’re told, maybe because they like what they hear or are afraid to look further.

The world is full of these folks, including ones who have been taught incorrect religious beliefs. Whether they’ve accepted a distorted version of the Gospel or embraced Zena the Warrior Princess as ruler of the universe, the water they’re drinking is polluted with misinformation, misinterpretations and outright lies.

When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, He said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4: 13-14)

As Christians, we know that Mr. Spock is not a deity and that we weren’t Francis Scott Key penning The Star Spangled Banner in a past life. Are we, though, drinking the safe, pure water that Jesus gives us? Are we, and those who teach us, sipping on man’s ideas, rules and rituals? Injecting additives? Diluting or dismissing scriptures that don’t seem fitting to modern life?

We need to ask ourselves these questions because the devil’s primary tool is subtle deception. He takes the truth and twists it just a little—and the affect can be as devastating as a tiny drop of bacteria in a pool of fresh water.

Let’s only settle for the clean, refreshing, untampered-with water offered by Jesus Christ, flowing freely from the pages of scripture into our hearts, minds and actions.

It’s the only water that quenches, and the only one safe to drink. As for everything else…

Go ahead and dump it out.




©Donna G. Morton December 2006

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