Water

The screenshot above of the Palestinian woman bathing her kids puts a different perspective to any complaint we might have about life. It again illustrates that we are in the top x% of the privileged in the world.

A small challenge this morning making breakfast with no running water. Dirty dishes that we could not wash yesterday, no water in the tap, no water in the toilet cistern… at least I had a shower back in February so that part was not urgent…

So here is a story.

Saturday morning we get a panic call from Alejandra. We have never met her, but we sent her our keys so as she could stay in our apartment in Madrid. We can go back there legally now, but for over a year we were not able to travel there because of lockdown. We all have choices to make, and we sensed that giving her the keys was a redemptive choice, redemptive as it pushed back against a culture that we do not wish – we have to sow where we want the world to go, surely that is the practical outworking of refusing to acknowledge the lordship of Caesar?

The boiler is broken and water is pouring out. She then said she woke at 2.00am to the sound of rain, but it sounded inside the apartment. Back to sleep… woke and got up at 8.00ish. So some 6+ hours of water pouring out had caused quite a lot of damage, inside the kitchen and to the apartment below as well.

One day later, we had just been out for an hour, and when we came back the neighbour asked if we had water. Up we go and discover no water. An hour later he owns up that he had drilled through our water pipe, with the words that we had heard the day before – ‘Your water poured out everywhere’.

Compared to the Palestinian woman in the screenshot our situation is a blip, an inconvenience… but 2 cases of ‘all your water came pouring out…’ over neighbours are either coincidental, weird or…

Our entry to Madrid was ‘ up the inside of a sewer pipe’. We certainly had challenges, and then to remind us the upstair’s (there is one floor above us) toilet leaked through our ceiling. Not too pleasant water coming in. Now in both places our water has poured out (sorry neighbours!).

There is only one source for water – spiritual water. How we connect to that source can change. In both places the first step was that the mains water supply was stopped. Re-connections, new conduits etc., had to be put in. Then a connection back to the main source. I don’t think we are reading too much into it, for this has been our story this year. Thank God for water (past), thank God for the sign that neighbours can benefit from ‘your water pouring out’. But we are now in a season of getting a whole new supply of water, different pipes etc… OK more to it – but I think this might be a sign wider than ourselves. A year is here for connection to the one and only source, but expect changes, for the flow to neighbours of the old supply is changing.

Oh… and hopefully by the end of today we will be able to wash the dishes, and I will need to consider carefully if another shower might be due.