Can you have too much rain?

All photos courtesy of Unsplash 

I don’t know if you have noticed, but we seem to have had a lot of rain lately.

OK, let’s put the sarcasm one side for a moment.   I think we all agree that, in this country, we have our fair share of rain, but even so, there has – seriously – been an extraordinary amount over the past months.  As a result, there has been a significant amount of flooding in many parts of the country.  

By contrast, I can remember the summer of 1976 when we went for weeks on end without any rain at all.  At that time people were longing for a downpour as gardens went unwatered, cars were unwashed and beaches were continually full.

We would all agree that we need rain even though we complain about it. But there is a very fine dividing line between drought and flood.  Usually, in this country at least, we live on that fine line and we have enough water for our uses without it becoming a hazard to our homes and lives.

But in many parts of the world, water is a precious commodity.  It seems strange that a planet that has so much water in the oceans can suffer from water shortage in so many areas.  But it is a fact that only three percent of the water on earth is what we would call fresh water, and of that, two and a half percent is unusable either because it is locked up in the polar ice caps, in glaciers or in permafrost or because it is so far underground as to be inaccessible.  After accounting for polluted water, it has been calculated that only about 0.3 percent of all the water on earth is usable as drinking water.

It is incredible to think that all human and animal life on earth depends on such a small amount of water, but the fact remains that, without this vital liquid, life would cease.

We can often take our water supply for granted as, all we have to do is turn on a tap to obtain a fresh clean stream of cold water, but for many people in the world, the daily need for water necessitates a trip to the local well or river.

The Lord Jesus once met with a woman who had made this daily trip when He was travelling through a town called Sychar one day. On the outward appearance, the woman was simply there to fulfil her daily need for water, but Jesus knew that she had another, deeper need.

His words to her were startling and thought provoking.

“Everyone who drinks this water (referring to the water in the well) will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman, of course, was intrigued and interested to receive such a wonderful gift as, at the beginning, she thought that she would be able to avoid the daily trek to get water from the well. But as the conversation continued, she realised that Jesus was offering her something far greater and far more important. He was offering her the spiritual fulfilment and satisfaction through a living relationship with Him.  He was offering her eternal life.

We all need water to live.  But that is a need we have to fulfil what is a temporary and physical demand.

We all have that deeper need as well.  We all need the living water that Jesus spoke to the woman about, for we all need to receive from the Lord Jesus that gift of eternal life that He offers.  

The woman at the well came looking for water, but found something far more precious and far more lasting.  May you also know that same blessing at the beginning of 2024.

DAILY MESSAGES WITH MEANING (05/01/24)

Written by STEPHEN TRESEDER 

Oil disaster strikes unexpectedly

All photos courtesy of Unsplash 

Disasters can be due to many factors.  Some we call natural disasters such as earthquake, fire, storm, tornadoes, volcanoes or wave/tsunami damage and they can lead to many deaths and terrible destruction of property. Some disasters are man made and are the result of lack of knowledge, failure to gain information or simply stupidity.  

Some oil workers were employed by the Texaco Oil Company to drill for oil in a lake in Louisiana. The place was Lake Peigneur and so they went with the latest sophisticated equipment and started to drill.  This all took place in November 1980.  Apparently their calculations informed them that there was an abundance of oil in the area and that it would soon gush to the surface. They drilled for several hours and then they decided to sit back and wait for the expected upsurge of oil from below.  Their expectations were to be sadly dashed and a dreadful disaster took place that day.

Instead of oil gushing upwards a whirlpool formed and all the water in the entire 1,300 acre lake was sucked down below.  Also five houses on the shoreline were sucked in to the whirlpool as well as eleven barges, some tug boats, two oil rigs and a mobile home.  That was not all as the nearby botanical garden was also destroyed and Jefferson Island lost ten percent of its land surface.  The end result was a half-mile crater. One local fisherman said that he thought the world was coming to an end. It was a dramatic conclusion to an attempt to find oil.

The last train from Limerick!

All photos courtesy of Unsplash 

The green land of Ireland was once described as one huge golf course criss crossed by railway lines. A bit of an exaggeration but it did once have a more extensive network of lines than it has now. Some of them served quite rural sparsely populated areas, often on lonely branch lines that saw, in a number of cases, only one train each way per day.

Stations could be some distance from the area they were meant to serve and their names quite unusual. There was Horse & Jockey in Co Tipperary, Meeting House Halt in Co Antrim, Narrow Water in Co Down, Oola in Co Limerick and Tubbercurry in Co Sligo to name a few.

By the late 1960’s nearly all the rural stations with their unusual names and their few or only one train a day had gone but there remained one route that still had its daily train in the timetable. Each weekday morning at 9.50 am an engine, two coaches and a guards van set out from Ballina in Co Mayo for Limerick, returning in the afternoon at 3.50 pm. I was able to make two journeys on the Limerick afternoon departure. The first being as one of a handful of passengers from Limerick who upon arriving at the Co Galway station of Gort found themselves invaded by secondary school children. They were polite, well behaved and in talking to them had a knowledge of Bible stories. Among the passengers were also two friendly ladies in their sixties who had disembarked from a transatlantic liner. at Cobh near Cork that morning. I was able to obtain an official pass to ride in the cab on my next journey on this daily train. A cab ride is a unique experience and gives one a completely different view of  travelling by rail as you know what lies ahead along the line. 

I don’t believe in barbers!

All photos either personal or courtesy of Unsplash 

A man went to a barber’s shop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine loving a God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but did not respond because he did not want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and un-kept. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? I don’t believe that barbers exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber. "I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"