A Well of Water Springing Up to Life
“In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate and a raging ocean covered everything.” The earth was covered with water. (Gen 1:2) It was and still is.
Water is a basic element of life. Our scientific generation can understand water in its three basic forms. It is the only substance of earth that is a liquid we drink, a solid as ice, and a gas as steam. Its molecular structure is the simplest a young student learns: H2O. Water consists only of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Yet we cannot make it simply or cheaply.
Commander Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, told me of looking over the barren moonscape at the earth in the distance and realizing how this planet is different from every other planet in the solar system. It is different because the water of the seas and atmosphere make planet Earth the only blue planet in the solar system.
Our earth is covered by 1.5 billion cubic kilometers of water. 70% of the earth’s surface is water. It is the ultimate recycled product. We have on earth all the water that has ever existed and all that shall ever exist. No more is being made and none is ever destroyed. It simply changes form and returns to the earth, the air or the sea to be recycled!
We sail on it and our nation is surrounded by it, but we cannot cheaply desalinate it. Only 3% of earth’s water is fresh and of that 3%, 75% is frozen into the icecaps and glaciers which consist of about 1000 years supply from all the rivers and lakes in the world. It is water that primarily shapes our land, provides our fertility and sustains all our life. Water controls the temperature of our world and creates the air currents.
Sometimes Australia is inundated over the east coast with water flooding our towns and valleys with every river spreading across the countryside. Yet now in the inland of our nation we are experiencing one of the greatest shortages of water for at least two centuries. For the first time in a decade Lake Eyre in South Australia is full, but the countryside is dying of thirst for the rain that fills the lake has fallen not there, but a thousand miles away in Queensland.
Our national life revolves around finding, conserving, using and battling with water. It is our slave and our master. The inland Aborigines centre their lives on the supply of water, and in our most sophisticated cities it is the most common topic of conversation.
We know there are a number of things we must do – and do them all simultaneously. One of the most pressing problems confronting Australia is the vexed question of water – its conservation, its distribution, its use and its management.
1. We must make more efficient use of water
There are a number of things we must as a nation do. The first is to stop the leaks in the Great Artesian Basin. Our largest water source is leaking 200 billion litres every year by uncontrolled bores. The Great Artesian Basin is an invaluable source of water in an otherwise mostly dry inland. While it may look like a never-ending supply, this is ‘dinosaur’ water, developed over millions of years, and not quickly recreated. Science shows that we are taking more than is sustainable – in other words, we are on a one-way track to running the basin dry. Currently, 892 bores are running 24 hours a day, most in NSW and Queensland, although many of these are now being capped.
We must also reduce water losses in irrigation channels. The Wimmera Mallee Water project in Victoria will replace 17,500 kilometres of open earthen channels with pipes. When finished, the work will save 93 billion litres of water each year that would otherwise have been lost to evaporation and seepage. In Australia there are more than 70,000km of open water conduits, including 12,000km of stock and domestic supply systems. That kind of project must become national.
We must improve the way we irrigate. Agriculture uses 70% of Australia’s fresh water. In many ways, the irrigation systems that are frequently used, such as flood or furrow, are a blank cheque for using water – that is people use it until it runs out.
For 27 years I was chair of one of Australia’s greatest Citrus Orchards at Paringa S.A. In the early 1980’s we brought an Israeli hydrologist to Australia to help us introduce a trickle drip irrigation method. As a result we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on electricity p.a., pumping salty Murray River water onto our trees which caused us great losses because the salt drying on the leaves caused curly leaf and caused the young crop to drop. Less water directed at the roots solved our problems and generated greater profits.
Farmers are making more efficient use of water by planting crops suitable for the Australian environment and farming livestock suitable for the Australian environment. They are also learning how to protect their farms from erosion and salinity, replant our riverbanks and reduce water losses from dams.
In Wagga Wagga there has been an exhibition (The River Exhibition) which displayed the amount of water needed to produce different products. One orange requires 75 litres of water; 1 bottle of wine requires 270 litres of water; 1 loaf of bread requires 630 litres of water; 1 cotton t-shirt requires 1,060 litres of water; 1 kilogram of white rice requires 2,385 litres of water; 1 average steak requires 10,000 litres of water. These figures take into account the entire amount of water used to produce a food such as a steak. The amount of water required to irrigate the field (grass) for the beast to eat throughout its lifetime – before slaughtering.
The comparison is not intended to make farmers feel guilty about the amount of water we use, but to think a little about the amount of water required to grow different vegetables and produce different goods.
2. We must recycle our water
We must not waste our wastewater. The wastewater treatment project in Virginia, South Australia, where market gardeners are growing vegetables using treated wastewater effluent from Adelaide is an outstanding example of good recycling. Last year they used almost 10 billion litres of water. Leading farmers in the area believe they will double production over the next decade supporting both the local South Australian market as well as exports.
At my home we have lived on tank water until just recently when town water came to our front gate for the first time. However, we currently only use town water for drinking, cooking and use inside the house.
We collect all of our roof water in a 50,000 litre concrete tank which waters the flower gardens. This has been our main supply. We later added a 1000 litre tank to collect water from our barn, woodshed and chook house and this waters our animals. We later added a swimming pool and also a 5000 litre tank to collect water from my workshop and this is used to top up and backwash the pool as required. A solar blanket covers the pool when not in use to stop evaporation.
The entire two acres is covered with hundreds of trees, (fruit, nuts and natives) and floral shrubs and gardens. Every tree and shrub, every garden and the camellia hedge is watered by trickle drip irrigation, pumped from our dam. The dam is fed by natural run-off, all waste water from the house, backwash and excess rain from the pool, and overflow from the tanks. The dam which collects all the water is covered by lotus which provides beautiful flowers and the extremely large lotus leaves cover the entire surface reducing evaporation. The water plants oxygenate the water and in the dam native perch reduce the nutrients. A pump recycles the water through the irrigation system to all trees and plants.
Every leaf and fallen branch is put through the mulcher and mulch a foot high covers every garden and tree root area to the drip line. This conserves the water.
This means we also must not waste our rainwater. I have put in three rainwater tanks. Rainfall in Sydney was 1085mm in 2007 and 1044mm in the nine months of this year. An average house with five one kilolitre rainwater tanks (one for each downpipe) collecting water from the whole roof area, would have yielded 100KL of water or enough to supply two-thirds of indoor use for the year. It is feasible that rainwater can be the cheapest source of water in Sydney. NSW state government policy throughout the 20th century was to remove rainwater tanks from urban areas. Only 3% of Sydney households now have them.
Reduction in mains drinking water consumption is now mandatory for new houses and renovations throughout NSW. The reduction is achieved using rainwater tanks. Rainwater tanks are also the most effective method of reducing stormwater discharge of the most damaging kind, because water from roofs has both concentrated volume and velocity. Rainwater tanks benefit the environment. Rainwater tanks are the best additional water supply option for Australians and do not preclude other supply options.
We should store our water underground for later. Large concrete tanks for example can be built under sporting fields and car-parks. An estimated 5 billion litres per year of storm water is piped out of our towns and cities.
We must capture and reuse more of this water. Inside the home, 55% of our household water use is on toilet flushing or on the garden. Storage of storm water in rainwater tanks can be used to cover some of these needs and all of it must be recycled to other uses on the property.
As Slim Dusty, sang in “Matilda No More”,
“We cut down the trees and the land we reclaimed
We ploughed and we planted and
We ploughed once again
And again and again and again and again.
So now on a hot windy day
We watch our topsoil blown away.
So who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?
The desert is marching down to the sea
The day that it stretches from shore to far shore
We’ll go Waltzing Matilda no more.”
Every one of us is utterly dependent upon water. Life cannot exist without water. We need water simply to live. Your body is about two thirds water and so is almost every other living organism. The percentage of water is about the same in a mouse, an elephant, a potato, a grain of wheat or a person.
You drink about 60,000 litres of water in a lifetime yet if you lose only 20% of your bodily fluids you die a painful death. In our homes we use an average of 260 litres of day, mostly in washing and sewage which we return to the sea highly polluted.
Industry uses water more than any other material using hundreds of millions of litres of water daily in Sydney in almost every process. The making of each newspaper, for example, consumes about 250 litres of water. In every land we consume more water than the day before by our increasing population and industry. Yet 97% of the water of the world is salty and unusable for drinking, industry or farming, and we have no way of cheaply manufacturing it or desalinating it.
The Middle East is a dry area where water is a precious commodity, where deserts are crossed only by people who know the waterholes and the rare oasis. The earliest human constructions were storages to hold water, and agriculture only commenced when man built channels to direct water.
Rome conquered the world and extended civilization because it could build aqueducts, canals and reservoirs. When Rome was defeated the water supplies fell into disrepair and the great civilizations of the Middle East, Britain, and Europe declined while North Africa returned to the desert.
Water is a theme that runs like a river of life through the Bible. Water was central at creation when the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters dividing them into sea and dry land.
Water was central at religious activities because of its cleansing powers. The prophets spoke of God cleansing us with clean water. John the Baptist claimed, “God sent me to baptise with water”, using immersion to symbolise the cleansing from sin. Jesus told Nicodemus: “No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”(John 3:5). Paul spoke of God cleansing the church after “making it clean by washing it in water.” (Eph 5:26), a symbol of the word and baptism.
Water was central at the great moment of Israel’s history when God told Noah to build an ark to save his family and his creatures and when God divided the waters of the Red Sea and allowed Israel safe passage but the Egyptians to be destroyed. Water played a significant part in Israel’s national life, and huge cisterns and mikvahs or baptistries were built by the entrance to the Temple.
Water was central at the level of human sustenance and the Israelites were promised “bread and water” and that God would bring them to “a fertile land that has rivers and springs and underground streams gushing out into the valleys.” (Deut. 8:7).
Water was central to God’s promises that “justice would roll down like waters” and that God Himself was “the fountain of living water.” Isaiah promised: “As fresh water brings joy to the thirsty so God’s people rejoice when He saves them.” (Isa. 12:3). David told of the Good Shepherd leading “beside still waters”. The Bible ends in Heaven with the Angel showing John “the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the Throne of God and of the Lamb, and flowing down the middle of the city’s street. And on each side of the river was the Tree of Life.” (Rev. 22:1 2).
Water was central at every village. The village life revolved round the well. Here, early every morning the women gathered to draw water and late at night the flocks came to be given drink. It was the focal point of life, the reason why the village was built there, and the centre of community gossip.
Jesus was travelling from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, passing through the desert area of Samaria in the central barren region. Samaria was populated by several hundred thousand descendants of Jacob and Joseph, whose bones were brought from Egypt and buried nearby.
Here, at Mt Gerizim, Jacob dreamed of a ladder going up to heaven and the Samaritans believed this was the true place to worship God. They read only the books written by Moses in the Old Testament, refused to worship at the Jerusalem Temple, and sacrificed their own lambs at Passover.
The Samaritans escaped being carried off into slavery in 721 BC when the Assyrians removed the Jews and later when the Jews returned the hatred between the races was intensified. This hatred has lasted to this day. Today in the city of Sychar there are 528 Samaritans who still follow their own High Priest, read their own scriptures, sacrifice their own Passover lamb, and whose children threw stones at our Israeli cars when I was there!
Jesus came to Sychar and rested at their well, sitting on the round stone top that exists to this day. This well had been dug by Jacob about 1800 BC and is about 100 feet deep, lined with rock most of the way down. A woman, rejected by the other women of her town came out to the well at midday, long after the other women were resting from the heat. Jesus asked her to give Him a drink of water, and in so doing, crossed over social, religious, racial and sexual barriers that really amazed her: “You are a Jewish man, and I am a Samaritan woman, so how can you ask me for a drink?” (John 4:9).
Jesus took that woman into spiritual depths by responding: “If you only knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask Him and he would give you life giving water.” (v10) The woman cannot understand how He can give water that is bubbling, running, sparkling the usual kind of spring water that is described as “life giving water” because there is no spring nearby and he had not even a bucket for well water.
But Jesus says: “Whoever drinks of this water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water which will provide him with life giving water and give him eternal life.” (V13 15) And the woman replied: “Sir give me that water!”
She still had much to learn. She still had to discover the spiritual nature of life giving water. She still had to face up to her own sin. She still had to discover that her old way of worshipping was not enough and that the Spirit of God could come to her. She still had to discover that Jesus was a prophet of God, and still had to witness to the women of the town who shunned her: “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could He be the Messiah?”
She still had to lead others to Jesus and to see them believe because of her testimony. She still had to hear others declare their belief in Jesus that “He really is the Saviour of the world.” (v42). But all that was to follow. What was important was that at that moment she desired to drink of the water of life!
Do you thirst after the Spirit of God like that? Do you wish you possessed that life giving water?
We Australians know the significance of water but how much more important is it to discover the water of life that springs up to eternal life! Yet so few seek the life giving waters that alone satisfy.
The pleasures of this world never satisfy. Like saltwater, the more we drink the more we crave, and the more we crave the more sure is our death. Jesus alone gives life giving water! And the life giving water that Jesus Christ gives springs up to eternal life.
I saw living water, that water that leaps out of rock and runs and sparkles with thousands of bubbles, when I was at Hepburn Springs in Victoria. There living water comes out of rock. There I spoke about the Spirit of God that Jesus Christ gives who springs up to eternal life within the believer.
When you believe in Jesus Christ you will be satisfied and never thirst again: “No, never thirst again, No, never thirst again, Whosoever believeth in Him, shall never, never thirst again.” Those who believe in Jesus Christ know that lasting satisfaction.
Once some sailors in the Amazon basin of South America were shipwrecked and in the heat of the tropics were dying of thirst. They were self disciplined enough to know that they should not drink sea water, lest the salt cause greater craving. When they were rescued, the captain of the rescue vessel said: “But why didn’t you drink the sea water?” In disbelief that a captain should make such a crazy statement they replied: “Because the salt water would drive us mad with thirst”. The Captain responded: “But do you not understand, we are off the coast from the mouth of the Amazon, and although you cannot see it, over the horizon the mighty Amazon River is emptying into this gulf every moment of the day. And right here all the water is fresh water, straight from the mountains!” Fresh life giving water had been around them all the time and they did not drink!
How like those who hear the words of Jesus, but fail to drink them in, and find the sustaining, refreshing life He offers!
If you only “ask Him and he would give you life giving water.” (v10). I have told you that Jesus gives us of His Spirit which can be a spring within us of life giving water giving you eternal life. All you must say is: “Sir give me that water!”
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC