Some Time Ago I Saw A Travelogue On Television ...

“Some time ago I saw a travelogue on television concerning a group of explorers who were searching in Africa for a vanishing tribe. In the course of their travels they came across some natives who for centuries had made their home on the banks of this one particular river. This in itself did not cause wonder, until they were showed the polluted stream. It was filled with dirt and every contamination imaginable. The natives had developed a method of swishing over the top of the water to get the bigger chunks out before scooping it up to drink. One of the explorers took his canteen and poured out a large cup of crystal-clear water and handed it to one of the aged women of the tribe, whose face was as wrinkled as a prune. She took the cup, pressed it to her lips, and didn’t put it down until she had drained it. Then through an interpreter she said that she had never dreamed that there was anything in this world as sweet and wonderful as that. I thought then: how like the world without Christ! They too drink from polluted streams—just swishing the ‘chunks’ out of the way because they have never known anything better. However, when they finally taste the crystal waters of eternal life, they proclaim that they never before realized there was anything so sweet and wonderful That old woman was forced to go back to her polluted waters. But, thank God, we who have partaken of the ‘living waters’ of salvation need never go back.”(Our Daily Bread)