Today's 1 st reading and Gospel bring us face to face with one of the Bible's most potent symbols - water. But water is not the dynamic image that it used to be centuries ago. There are major differences in our contemporary lifestyle for that of the ancient Israelites. For us, water is usually abundant - its always there at the turn of a tap, we can even buy 30 or 40 bottled varieties at the grocery store. We think nothing of doing laundry every day, showering twice a day, washing the car, watering the lawns.
Some airlines even offer aerosol spray bottles of spring water to relieve jet lagged facial muscels.
At Palm Springs the better hotels have even installed automatic misters that gently spritz you as your basked pooside in the 102 degrees heat. Floods and drought, well that happens to other people. Imaging then the inconvenience that we experience in being without running water for a few hours and multiply that a thousand fold - then you have the importance of water in ancient biblical literature and its association with the Divine. Without water you died. The failure of a well could cause the demise of an entire village.