This week: The water crisis in Gaza, sacrifice in The Fantastic Four, and what God looks like according to an eight-year-old.

Lord, When Did We See You Thirsty in Gaza?

This week, we released an article from an upcoming issue of the magazine early due to the urgent water crisis unfolding in Gaza. Mae Elise Cannon and Ben Norquist write that Israel has turned God’s most essential provision into a weapon:

Amid the continued Israeli military offensive following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, the United Nations has warned that the water crisis in Gaza is at a breaking point. In late June, according to a U.N. report, only 40% of drinking water facilities were functional, more than a quarter of the wells were contaminated, and fuel shortages pushed water systems to near collapse. Desperate Gazans are giving their children seawater to drink, resulting in pediatric kidney ailments. They are commandeering trucks delivering clean water.

In the Middle East, water is more than a resource. Water is a source of power, and in many cases, a weapon of war. The Gaza Strip is the most urgent and devastating example.

The survival of Ahmad (whose last name we have withheld for security reasons), like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza, depends on gaining access to basic humanitarian resources, especially water.

“Sometimes a water truck comes to our area, so we fill some gallons. When it doesn’t, we’re forced to drink regular water,” Ahmad told us and our colleagues at Churches for Middle East Peace over WhatsApp in July. The “regular water” he refers to is untreated groundwater pulled from local wells, risky to consume even before the most recent war. “My body didn’t take it. I got very sick,” he told us. “But we had no other option.”

The Bible is full of references to water. Water is a source of life. The prophet Amos reminds us that God thirsts for justice, not empty sacrifice: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). Jesus offers “living water” to the Samaritan woman at the well. “Whoever drinks the water I give them, will never thirst,” he says (John 4:14). Water is life. Without water, the body and the soul of the people die.

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