Philadelphia is especially hard hit with 56 pharmaceuticals or by-products in treated drinking water including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. San Francisco’s water supply contained sex hormones.
Researchers say these trace amounts are in such small quantities as to be harmless, but the residual effects for the future are unknown.
The problem is caused by medications ingested and flushed down toilets. They make their way to wastewater facilities, which treat water for major illegal pollutants but are unable to filter medications that then return to the water supply only to be potentially reprocessed. These contaminants may even be spread by septic tanks and retained in aquifers that provide public drinking water.
Add to that issues over animal growth hormones or additives in food products, general air pollution or even electromagnetic effects from power lines and other electric devices, and the cumulative danger may be considerable. Appearing on a morning TV show, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. even suggested that hormonal water pollution may be a factor in the early sexual maturity of young girls.
The threat to public drinking water is an issue of mounting concern. Bottled water, long thought to be a defense against these problems, offers no protection as regulations for that are less stringent than those for public tap water.
There are three kinds of water—polluted water, pure water and living water. Polluted water can harm or kill life. Pure water can prolong life. But only the Bible’s Living Water can give eternal life to quench the thirst of the soul and eternally satisfy us.
Christ spoke to a sinful woman who met him at Jacob’s well in Samaria. The dialogue is found in John 4:10-14:
Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. The woman said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?" Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."
Christ still offers the spiritually thirsty this living water. The final book of the Bible closes with Revelation 22:17 inviting, "And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."
Temporal water supplies may increasingly be contaminated, but Christ’s Living Water is always available in endless supply. John W. Peterson’s gospel hymn says it well:
I thirsted in the barren land of sin and shame,
and nothing satisfying there I found;
But to the blessed cross of Christ one day I came,
Where springs of living water did abound.
Drinking at the springs of living water,
Happy now am I, My soul they satisfy;
Drinking at the springs of living water,
O wonderful and bountiful supply.
Dave Virkler
No comments:
Post a Comment