Water

U.S. politics continue to be a chaotic subject, and a new poll finds the majority of Americans are rapidly losing faith in their country’s leaders. Over seven in 10 people say there’s no one they trust to save them from an end-of-the-world event.

If you’re thinking of creating your own Doomsday checklist, researchers found that the most popular items people are stocking up on include water (41%), warm clothing (39%), and extra food (38%). Additionally, one in 10 think they’ll need some extra cash when the world ends.

To decipher which U.S. states are prepping for doomsday, surveyors examined the extent of Americans’ preparations and survival plans. Leading the pack, Nebraska emerged as the most prepared, with 51% of respondents indicating they’ve begun or are considering doomsday preparations. Montana and New Mexico also rank highly on the list of states preparing for catastrophic events, with 50% and 47% of their residents, respectively, making or contemplating preparations.

Financially, the majority of respondents invested between $1,000 to $4,999 in disaster preparations, with a few in states like Montana and New Mexico splurging up to $10,000. For those feeling the urgency to prepare, researchers emphasize the importance of storing water, food, shelter, medical supplies, and hygiene items.

Researchers reported recently that it is striking that water is the “least understood material on Earth.” In an article, researchers ask, “What could we not know about water? It’s wet! It’s clear. It comes from rain. It boils. It makes snow and it makes ice! Does our government actually spend taxpayer money to study water? Yes, water is common—in fact, it is the third most common molecule in the universe. But it is also deceptively complex.” From steam to ice, water continues to mystify. Here are several of the weird facts about water:

Why Does Ice Float?

Researchers tried to tease apart what makes water unique among liquids. It’s got anomalous properties, like expanding when cooled below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (This) explains why lakes freeze downward, from top to bottom, rather than up. Normally frozen solids are denser than their liquid equivalents, which would mean that frozen chunks would fall to the bottom of a lake instead of staying on top. But when water freezes, it creates an open structure, mostly empty space and less dense than … liquid water, which is why water props ice up.

Why Can Insects Walk On It?

Water has an uncanny level of surface tension, allowing beings light enough, like insects, to walk or stand atop it. Since it’s these distinctive features among others that power our climate and ecosystems, water can appear to be “fine-tuned” for life according to the researchers.

How Does Water Evaporate?

The rate of evaporation of liquid water is one of the principal uncertainties in modern climate modeling. ... The addition of salts to water raises the surface tension … and so should reduce the evaporation rate. But experimental studies show little or no effect when salts are added. The exact mechanism for how water evaporates isn’t completely understood.

Possible Preaching Angle:

These researchers point out some of the weird anomalies of water, which covers 71% of the surface of our world. Although they do not acknowledge God in their research, they do admit that “water can appear to be ‘fine-tuned’ for life.” Christians would respond that without its God-given properties, lakes would freeze from the bottom up, killing all fish in them. And, although the salt in oceans should inhibit evaporation, the water in the oceans evaporates, producing rain over the land. These are some examples of “Intelligent Design” in which our wise creator fine-tuned the earth to sustain life and provide for our needs and enjoyment of life.

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

False gods are capable of cleaning neither themselves or their worshippers. Only Jesus can purify the pollution of the human heart.

There’s a saying in the Black community that’s endured for decades and featured in several rap songs: “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” One Monday afternoon, sixteen-year-old Anthony Alexander Jr. had just finished playing basketball in a local park. He was resting on a park bench, but he remained ready. Not for another game, but to save a life.

That was the moment when a young girl approached him in tears, telling Anthony that her friend was drowning in the water. Several of her friends had fallen through the ice into a nearby pond. Anthony immediately sprang into action. After quickly dialing 911, he looked around for anything that could help these children in distress. His chosen tool? A broken tree branch.

Anthony said, “The first kid, a boy, grabbed the stick and I pulled him out. But I couldn’t reach the other two.” Leaving nothing to chance, he walked out onto the ice and got in. He said, “It was freezing, but it wasn’t too bad because I wasn’t in [the water] that long. I didn’t really have time to think about it.”

By the time first responders arrived, Anthony had already saved two of the three children, and was closing in on the third. He was later lauded as a hero by Sgt. Patrick Kilroy of the Collingdale Police Department, who arrived on the scene shortly thereafter. Kilroy said, “If he hadn’t called 911 and hadn’t taken action, this might have had a very different and tragic outcome. He’s one quick-thinking kid.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God uses those who are available and prepared to make an impact. You don't have to be a professional, or even an adult. You just have to be yielded, ready, and willing.

Italy is peppered with tiny mountain villages, and Dezzo di Scalve is one of the smallest. The picturesque River Dezzo runs right through the middle of this small village. On each side of the village is a row of attached houses, as is common in the area. However, the row on the eastern side stands out, as one of the houses is built on top of a massive boulder. The boulder projects out of the ground and the two houses on the left and right of the boulder are actually built around its contour.

The oldest record of Dezzo di Scalve consists of a report compiled by a land surveyor in 1586 and it includes a drawing of the village. A prominent feature of the drawing is the same boulder, surrounded by a cluster of houses. This means that the boulder has been an integral part of this village for more than 400 years.

The large Gleno Dam was built above the village in 1923, but the project was immediately cursed by poor materials and poor workmanship. Sure enough on December 1, 1923, the tragedy happened. The central section collapsed, causing a mass of over 1.1 billion gallons of water to flood into the valley below.

Historical pictures of the town in the aftermath of the disaster show massive damage to roads, bridges, and the village itself that was almost completely washed away with 356 lives lost. However, among the few houses left standing are those that were constructed in and around the rock.

Singer/Songwriter Sandra McCracken writes in CT magazine:

There’s a call button above every seat on commercial airplanes. In all my travels, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. I’m not sure if that is due to shyness or to pride, as there have certainly been times when I acutely needed help while seated.

While traveling recently, for example, I endured some delays and was thirsty. Yet I waited to ask for anything until the plane reached 10,000 feet, when the flight attendants came row by row to grant our drink requests. I didn’t press the call button. It always seems more courteous to wait.

As Jesus hung on the Cross, one of the last phrases he spoke out loud was “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). This three-word inclusion in the Gospels is a subtle yet significant acknowledgment of Jesus’ human need. His thirst dignifies our humanity. He offered up this holy complaint, a declaration of his physical need. He pushed the call button.

God is the one who is responsible to supply our needs (Ps. 23:1; Phil. 4:19). Jesus invites us to participate, to receive, and to ask. Sometimes we are to ask and ask again (Luke 11:9; 18:1–8).

Jesus invites us to hit the call button. And he invites us to wait for him, sometimes well beyond when the plane has reached 10,000 feet. Ask and wait. Hope and receive. The springs of living water that he gives will never run dry.

Chicago is 800 miles from the nearest ocean, so when the world’s largest salt water aquarium opened there in 1930, its director decided that the ocean must come to Chicago. The Shedd Aquarium sent a series of railway tank cars down to Key West, Florida. There, they siphoned up a million gallons of ocean water for Chicago’s “magnificent marble home for fish.” Visitors in the 1930s were greeted by seahorses, sawfish, baby sharks, and a 585-pound manatee.

Today, the Shedd Aquarium uses a salt blend called Instant Ocean. It is mostly sodium chloride, the same stuff that makes up table salt. It also contains smaller amounts of other chemicals such as sulfate, magnesium, potassium, and calcium.

Aquariums that can pipe saltwater directly from the ocean do, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in California, is the prime example. Monterey is in a fantastic location. The bay is ringed by protected marine areas, so its water is exceptionally clean. At the back of the aquarium are intake pipes that supply all the building’s saltwater tanks. “We’re literally physically connected to the bay,” says Kasie Regnier, the director of applied research at Monterey Bay Aquarium. The pipes can bring in almost 2,000 gallons of water a minute.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Christians also need a constant supply of “living water” to maintain our spiritual health. Though far from home, we are literally connected through the life-giving ministry of the Holy Spirit who applies the living Word to our lives.

In his book, Paul Gould writes:

The writings of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson are infused with a sacramental theology. Her writing helps us see and savor the divine in the midst of the mundane. In an oft-cited passage, she invites readers to consider the ordinary—in this instance water—from a new vantage point. In her book Gilead, the Congregationalist minister John Ames knows his time on earth is coming to an end, so he writes a series of letters to his young son. Ames shares a memory of an earlier time when he watched a young couple stroll along on a leisure morning:

“The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running. The girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth.”

“I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

While California finds itself in the middle of a severe draught, farmers are using any method possible to secure water, even "witches." Water witches are so called because of their alleged ability to find water springs buried in the earth without the use of technology. "Water witches have been a fixture in California agriculture for about as long as people here can remember. Everyone knows of someone who's used one or a person who had 'the gift' or at least thought they did. Even John Steinbeck immortalized the role of the dowser in his seminal novel East of Eden, set in California's Salinas Valley."

While many scientists object to the idea that these "dowsers" have any kind of actual talent or gift, the tradition continues. When people get desperate for help they will turn to anything, even a man walking around an orchard with a stick, for help.