Water Without Authorisation
(short version)

Based on Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10; Matthew 10:24-39 – God chooses Israel yet hears Ishmael, receives Israel’s worship yet gathers nations, and demands allegiance while disturbing boundaries.

There was a spring in the hills above the city. Long before the war, people had driven there on weekends to picnic under the trees and fill bottles with the cold water that flowed from the rocks. The city water system had worked back then, so the spring had been more of a curiosity than a necessity. But wars have a way of changing the value of ordinary things.

By the fourth year of the fighting, the spring had become one of the few reliable sources of clean water left. The pipelines had been damaged so many times that nobody bothered counting. Entire neighbourhoods depended on a handful of trucks making daily journeys into the hills.

One of those trucks belonged to a man named Elias. Every morning before sunrise, he drove the winding road to the spring, filled the tanks mounted on the back of his ageing truck, and returned to distribute water throughout his district. It was not glamorous work. Nobody celebrated water deliveries. People only noticed when the truck did not arrive.

The city was divided by a broad road that everyone called The Line. No wall stood there. No checkpoint officially marked it. Yet everyone knew where it was. The Line separated one district from another, one story from another, one version of the war from another. Children grew up learning which streets not to enter. Adults learned to speak of the other side as if it were another country.

Elias rarely thought about the people beyond The Line. Not because he hated them. He simply had enough troubles of his own. Every day, there were families waiting for water. Every day, there were arguments over whose containers were filled first. Every day, there were rumours of shortages, attacks, and victories that never seemed to change anything.

One afternoon, as he drove home from the spring, he noticed a young girl sitting on a broken concrete barrier near The Line. Beside her was an empty plastic container. He assumed she was waiting for someone.

Continue reading the full story here.

Water Without Authorisation

Based on Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10; Matthew 10:24-39 – God chooses Israel yet hears Ishmael, receives Israel’s worship yet gathers nations, and demands allegiance while disturbing boundaries.

There was a spring in the hills above the city. Long before the war, people had driven there on weekends to picnic under the trees and fill bottles with the cold water that flowed from the rocks. The city water system had worked back then, so the spring had been more of a curiosity than a necessity. But wars have a way of changing the value of ordinary things.

By the fourth year of the fighting, the spring had become one of the few reliable sources of clean water left. The pipelines had been damaged so many times that nobody bothered counting. Entire neighbourhoods depended on a handful of trucks making daily journeys into the hills.

One of those trucks belonged to a man named Elias. Every morning before sunrise, he drove the winding road to the spring, filled the tanks mounted on the back of his ageing truck, and returned to distribute water throughout his district. It was not glamorous work. Nobody celebrated water deliveries. People only noticed when the truck did not arrive.

The city was divided by a broad road that everyone called The Line. No wall stood there. No checkpoint officially marked it. Yet everyone knew where it was. The Line separated one district from another, one story from another, one version of the war from another. Children grew up learning which streets not to enter. Adults learned to speak of the other side as if it were another country.

Elias rarely thought about the people beyond The Line. Not because he hated them. He simply had enough troubles of his own. Every day, there were families waiting for water. Every day, there were arguments over whose containers were filled first. Every day, there were rumours of shortages, attacks, and victories that never seemed to change anything.

One afternoon, as he drove home from the spring, he noticed a young girl sitting on a broken concrete barrier near The Line. Beside her was an empty plastic container. He assumed she was waiting for someone.

The next day, she was there again. The day after that, she was there as well. For nearly a week, he saw her sitting in the same place. Sometimes she stared at the road. Sometimes she stared at the container. She never waved him down. She never asked for anything. Eventually, curiosity overcame him. He slowed the truck and looked more carefully. The container beside her was cracked and faded from years of use. It was completely empty.

That evening, he found himself thinking about it. The following morning, he filled a small container at the spring and placed it beside the road near where the girl usually sat. He drove away before she arrived. When he returned that afternoon, the container was gone. The next day, he left another one. That disappeared too. The arrangement continued for several weeks. Elias never met the girl. He simply left water. She simply collected it.

Then one morning, he arrived to find not one empty container waiting by the road, but five. The next day, there were eight. The day after that, there were twelve. The containers varied in size and shape. Some were old cooking oil drums. Some were plastic jugs. One had been repaired so many times that it seemed held together entirely by wire and hope. Elias stood beside them for a long time.

For years, he had heard that the other district had everything. They had supplies. They had aid. They had connections. At least that was what people said. Empty containers told a different story.

From that day on, he began carrying extra water. Not enough for a neighbourhood. Not enough to solve anything. Just enough to fill the containers waiting near The Line. It did not take long for people to notice. At first, the criticism came quietly. Then it became louder. Someone painted TRAITOR across the side of his truck. Another person slashed two tyres during the night. A local official warned him that resources should remain within the district. Several neighbours stopped speaking to him altogether. Elias listened to all of it. Then, each morning, he drove to the spring. Each morning, he filled the tanks. Each afternoon, he left water beside The Line.

The criticism eventually stopped, not because people accepted what he was doing, but because they realised he was not going to stop.

Months passed. Then came the shelling. Nobody knew who had started it. Nobody ever seemed to know. By nightfall, entire streets were burning. Families fled carrying bags, blankets, photographs, and whatever else they could gather in a few desperate minutes. The stream of people moving through the darkness all seemed to be heading towards The Line. Elias joined the stream of people moving through the darkness. Behind them, smoke climbed into the night sky. Ahead of them lay the district they had spent years fearing.

He expected barriers. He expected hostility. He expected closed doors. Instead, as dawn began to break, figures emerged from the shadows carrying buckets of water. Others followed with bread. Others with blankets. A group of children appeared carrying plastic containers. Old containers. Familiar containers. Containers he recognised from the roadside. The same cracked jugs. The same patched drums. The same faded plastic stained by years of use.

The children moved through the crowd, offering water to exhausted families. Nobody asked who belonged where. Nobody stopped to discuss politics. Nobody demanded explanations. People simply drank. Elias stood beside his truck and watched.

For years, everyone had spoken about sides. Everyone had spoken about enemies. Everyone had spoken about who belonged and who did not. Yet in that moment, none of those things seemed nearly as important as thirst.

As the sun rose over the battered city, people moved back and forth across The Line carrying water, food, blankets, and wounded children. The boundary remained exactly where it had always been. Yet somehow it no longer seemed capable of holding what people had built around it.

And for the first time in a very long while, Elias wondered whether the spring in the hills had been teaching him something all along: water never asked which side of the city someone came from before it flowed.