water challenge, completed!

Last Friday was the last day of our family's 2-week water challenge to support the work of Blood:Water Mission. As promised, we celebrated with milkshakes and talked over what we had experienced and learned as a result. Here's a sampling:

How much did we donate?
Our family saved around $45 with four of us participating in 2 weeks of drinking only water. Without this challenge, I would never have realized we spend so much on beverages for our family! We drink juice for breakfast, milk at other meals, and water in between, so it doesn't seem like we have a particularly exciting or expensive beverage life. Now that I am noticing the price of such things, I have discovered that if we drank less juice and more soda, we'd probably save money. But why would I want to do that to my family? All in all, 2 weeks of water helped me appreciate the privilege we have to drink other things, and how rich we really are to be able to do so.

I'm thankful for the donors who gave $20 to help us increase our total gift! We were able to donate $65 all together.

How did you do?
My 9-year-old was sick and nauseous for part of the water challenge, so I backed off and let her drink juice and a little 7-Up to keep her hydrated. Otherwise, she didn't complain much but was definitely the most excited member of the family to have the challenge come to an end.

The 11-year-old found the challenge easy. He said only 1 friend at school asked why he was bringing water to school to drink at lunch, so he explained to him what we were doing. Otherwise, he gladly drank water and said next time he'd like to do the 40-day challenge.

My husband and I also found the challenge relatively easy to keep. Eric did miss his soda at work a bit, as it is a way to keep himself alert and a way to treat himself at times. I started to crave juice at breakfast by the second week, but found water easy to drink at other meals.

Anything else to add?
I found myself not just thinking of bringing clean water to needy, thirsty people, but of the souls of men, women, and children who would be affected by our little 2-week exercise of restraint. I don't want this challenge to simply be a "good work", but something that can last for eternity. How do these two aspects of helping others converge? When Jesus came to this world, He did so in a material body, willing to take on the experiences of mankind as the only way to deal with sin. As Christians, we are to take to heart not only souls, but also the material needs of the world around us. Tim Keller put it this way in his book, Prodigal God:

In Matthew 25, Jesus describes Judgment Day. Many will stand there and call him"Lord," but Jesus says, stunningly, that if they had not been serving the hungry, the refugee, the sick, and the prisoner, then they hadn't been serving Him (Matthew 25:34-40)... He is not saying that only the social workers get into heaven. Rather, he is saying that the inevitable sign that you know you are a sinner saved by sheer, costly grace is a sensitive social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of service to the poor...

Christianity...is perhaps the most materialistic of the world's faiths. Jesus's miracles were not so much violations of the natural order, but a restoration of the natural order. God did not create a world with blindness, leprosy, hunger, and death in it. Jesus's miracles were signs that someday all these corruptions of his creation would be abolished. Christians therefore can talk of saving the soul and of building social systems that deliver safe streets and warm homes in the same sentence. With integrity.

Jesus hates suffering, injustice, evil, and death so much, he came and experienced it to defeat it and, someday, to wipe the world clean of it. Knowing all this, Christians cannot be passive about hunger, sickness, and injustice... Christianity...teaches that God hates the suffering and oppression of this material world so much, he was willing to get involved in it and to fight against it.

I hope our family is a little less passive and more involved in the suffering of our world. And perhaps through this work, some souls will see His compassion and be won to Him.