Salty Pools

In my post last week I wrote about the positive influence of salt. It reminded me of a post last month about the proverb that you can’t draw fresh water from a salt-water well. That was about the inconsistency of praising God in one breath and cursing people with the next. Today I want to link the two with another story about remediating wells.

When wells become brackish or saline, they become useless. This is what happened after the tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The day after Christmas 2004 when a tsunami struck the coast of Sumatra Island, large boats were hurled inland and thousands of people were washed out to sea – and some 30,000 shallow wells suddenly became saline.

Canadian water engineer Peter Gray went there to help with damage assessment and consult on reconstruction. He told me how they repeatedly tried to pump out the saline wells with the hope of drawing fresh water into them from the surrounding ground. All efforts proved unsuccessful; the entire shallow aquifer had become saline. Essentially all of the fresh water was gone and had been replaced with salty, putrid water unfit for human use. Wells that had for decades provided fresh water for drinking, cooking and bathing, now poured out sea-water.

It happened in one hour. As the crest of the tsunami approached land, the water along the shoreline receded dramatically, exposing areas that were normally always submerged. Survivors reported an accompanying sucking sound as the trough of the massive wave literally sucked all the fresh water out of aquifers adjacent to the shore. The tsunami then inundated the low-lying shore line with salt-water and filled every crevice and well-shaft with sea-water.

Re-establishing a fresh-water aquifer after the intrusion of salt water can take a very long time. It may never be restored again without an enormous rainfall sufficient to displace the sea water, a monsoon, like a reverse tsunami, sufficient to displace the saline water or actually float above it as it refills the under-ground spaces with fresh water. That’s the only way the villages outside of Banda Aceh will ever again have local wells for drinking water.

That’s a metaphor for our hearts that have become unnaturally compromised; we’re deeply sinful, more than we know, and from our lips and hearts flow streams of boasting, complaining, lies, exaggerations, insults, etc. These all come so naturally – and flow out of the sub-strata of our hearts salty and bitter. Oh, many a kind and true word comes out as well; all is not poison; that’s the subtlety of it. We’re brackish when we’ve been designed to flow consistently fresh and refreshing.

The only thing that can reverse this condition is a massive counter-inundation of fresh clean water. May God's Spirit flood you with joy and peace today!

Photo Sources:
Salt - My Shimmer
Banda Aceh - Tsunami.com
Tsunami Wave - Reuters via TYWKIWDBI