The Well That Wasn't There

In 2018, a severe drought gripped Cape Town, South Africa, pushing the city toward what officials grimly called "Day Zero" — the date when municipal taps would run completely dry. Four million people watched reservoir levels plummet below thirteen percent. Residents queued for hours at natural springs with plastic jugs, tempers flaring in lines that stretched around city blocks. People shouted at officials. Neighbors accused each other of hoarding. The question on every tongue was bitter and familiar: "Will there actually be water tomorrow?"

Then something shifted. Communities began collecting greywater from showers to flush toilets. Churches opened their parking lots as water distribution points. Engineers drilled into aquifers no one had tapped before. The city pulled together not because the crisis disappeared, but because people stopped asking "Why is this happening to us?" and started asking "What can we do right here?"

Day Zero never came.

At Rephidim, Israel stood parched and furious, ready to stone Moses, demanding proof that God hadn't abandoned them in the desert. "Is the Lord among us or not?" they cried. And the Almighty answered — not by removing the wilderness, but by splitting open a rock no one thought held anything inside. The water was always there, hidden in the stone, waiting for the moment God chose to reveal it.

Sometimes provision doesn't look like escape from the desert. Sometimes El Shaddai cracks open the very thing you walked past a hundred times, and out pours more than enough.