It gets pretty crowded around the oasis this time of year. People from all over are here drinking of this wonderful water. There’s nothing like it in all the desert.

We just had some bad news. Abdul just brought word of a neighbor seen a few hundred yards out there, dying of thirst. His description made cold chills run over me. It’s tough to think about it. That Abdul is great with words. He can make you think it’s you that’s dying. He’s getting up a power-point presentation to go with his talks.

We’ve formed a kind of club. We call it ‘Desert Dwellers Who Have Found the Water.’ Meet every week, officers, the whole bit. We talk about how we came to the water, and we drink.

Right now there’s a discussion–argument, actually–as to whether the water in well A or well B is better. Some prefer A because they say the water is purer. The others say B is cooler. I don’t really know. Seems to me the water is the same since the wells are only twenty feet apart.

One time our club sent out a scout to find and rescue the thirsty. He did all right for a while, but carrying delirious and dying people to the water of life was hard, lonely and thankless work. When the old-timers criticized his methods, he quit. Now there are times when the water goes to waste, actually overflowing the well, because there aren’t enough people to drink it. It’s a shame to see it going to waste like that. Some speak of forming rescue and search parties, but a person has to have a gift for that kind of work.

The children? Oh, you noticed that there are very few of them here. We believe they ought to find the well for themselves. So we don’t try to influence them. It’s funny though–some of them have known very well where their mom and dad quenched their thirsts, but they still act like they’re lost. That’s young folks for you!

We’re having some excitement in the group right now. Seems somebody claims to have a new mint-flavored oasis over the next dune.

We’ve lost some members to them. I can understand. People want variety. Water has very little taste, you know, and could be made more exotic without losing any of its thirst-quenching powers. I get a little bored myself with the same thing day in and day out.

A funeral yesterday has left us all disturbed. A neighbor died of thirst. It doesn’t make sense–he lived in view of the oasis. Night after night he heard our songs drifting across the sand telling about the wonderful characteristics of water. Yet he never came.

But we did right by him. At his funeral we said good things. We didn’t even admit what everyone knew, that the poor guy had died of thirst. We even put a symbol of the water bucket on his tombstone. Makes the family feel better, you know.

Whenever any of our members go out into the sand dunes, we caution them against a gaudy display of their water canteens. You can get criticized for wearing your water on your sleeve, so to speak.

Our big topic this year is our organization’s name. Some want to shorten it from ‘Desert Dwellers Who Have Found the Water’ to various terms like ‘The Unthirsty’ or ‘The Satisfied.’ Or maybe ‘The Waterlovers.’ But we’re all agreed on what to call those who are dying of thirst in the dunes. We refer to them as ‘The Deserted.’

(NOTE: A word of explanation about this little piece. Years ago, I awakened at 3 a.m. with this on my mind. I jumped out of bed and wrote it down. Later, HIS magazine, the campus publication for Inter-Varsity Fellowship printed it, and other editors picked it up. It ran in 15 or 20 different Christian publications over the next few years, and in several foreign countries. Please feel free to copy it and use it any way you can.)