Well, Poop!

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

- Jeremiah 2.13

I hate to break it to you, but you've been showering in poop.

Bug poop, to be precise. Entomologist Rob Dunn, in his new book From Microbes to Millipedes, explains that various microscopic organisms live in your shower head and construct a carapace of their own excrement to keep from being washed away. Most of these little guys do not harm human beings, but the few bad actors who slip in undetected, like crack dealers polluting a good neighborhood, can make you really sick. And the city's water-treatment system is actually an enabler: It kills these thugs' natural predators and leaves them free to launch a drive-by on your immune system. 

Dr. Dunn does not go so far as to suggest we not bathe, but he'd like to see us change the shower head more often. He adds, however, that you'd be better off with untreated well water: It doesn't look as clean, but it contains the natural enforcers that put a hurt on the gangbangers. The "dead" water from your tap lacks these tiny DEA agents.

God tells Jeremiah that Judah has bad plumbing.

They had forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water. One idea of "living water" was flowing water, because when water moves, various nasties have less opportunity to settle down. To stretch a point, we could also say that "living water" is water that has things living in it - those superhero species that bust the bad guys.  They capped the well of cleansing faith in the true God. Well, that was bad enough, but they went a step farther: The people had dug out cisterns, and cracked ones at that, choosing to douse themselves with the dead idolatry that bred festering and infectious sin. They slather themselves with religious offal and wonder why they're sick.

In our secular society, it sometimes seems that the harder we scrub, the dirtier we get. We hose down our culture with the antiseptic antidotes of ingenious schemes that, according to the math, should leave us squeaky clean. Instead, we find ourselves feverish with fear, fighting the persistent cough of our own insecurities. We plug the wells of faith that teem with eternal life and opt instead for the sparkling poison of our own plans.

In John 7.38 Jesus declares himself to be the source of living water who can dig in our souls the deep wells of spiritual prosperity. Perhaps it is time we changed the shower head and tuned our ears to catch the sound of abundance of rain.