The Cost of Water

What does water cost? And who should pay? Is water a human right or a human need? How should water be financed?

Two contrasting images in the Bible give a hint:
► prisoners forced to buy their own drinking water
► a free-entry hospitality suite for every thirsty person on the planet!

The first story comes from the heart-wrenching lament of Jewish prisoners-of-war in 586 BCE when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, raped her women and burned the Temple. Among the atrocities they endured, we read,

We have to pay to drink our own water.

Even our firewood comes at a price.

We're slaves, bullied and bowed,

worn out and without any rest.

Lamentations 5:4 The Message

Degrading humiliation – and illustrative of millions in our world, 'bullied and bowed' by poverty, corruption and disease, by their lack of water and education.

But in the last chapters of the Bible we glimpse a better world, beyond indifference and injustice. Jesus calls out,

"To all who are thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life"
and
"Come!… whoever is thirsty, come; and take the free gift of the water of life." Revelation 21:6 and 22:17

Free? … no cost? How real is this?

Rain and dew fall freely, but collecting and distributing it is a costly business. Cities have to obtain water, treat it, store it, transport and distribute it. Engineers and consultants have to be paid and governments tax us to recover their investment. Even in the developing world, the boy who delivers water by donkey charges the villagers for his services. Water is almost never free – and the economics of water in the world are very complex.

But these closing words of the Bible about free water are not a naïve utopian vision. They both inspire me and challenge me. They assure me that just as rain and dew come as gifts of creation, so God quenches soul-thirst freely with gifts of mercy, forgiveness, hope and welcome. Jesus meets my deepest thirst AND gives me a model for responding to prisoners of poverty and despair across the world.

If rainfall and grace express the hospitality of God, our challenge is to steward creation's gifts and share them with the same sense of hospitality we have been given. Here is where our economic policies and practices are tested – along with our love of neighbor, our creativity, leadership and willingness to sacrifice and work together.

There is a great debate in the UN these days, among governments and NGO’s among business and environmental interests about water rights and needs, about what is just and what strategies will most effectively meet the urgent water needs of the world in the decades ahead.  How do we protect the common treasure?  Who should pay for it?  How do we share it fairly? 

These two biblical glimpses fire my imagination.   What do they do for you?