Our Daily Bread - Turbid Water ( March 2026 )

Our Daily Bread

Title: Turbid Water

Intro

Only Jesus, the source of living water can satisfy the thirst of our souls, writes Anil Israel.

Highlight

There is indeed a lot of filth out there in the dark world of media. But we are not created to drown ourselves in the pit of pitch. Whoever touches pitch will be contaminated by it (Sirach 13:1). ‘If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains’ (Cicero).

Article

God is absolute goodness. No one is good except God alone (Mark 10:18).  Everything God created is good. After creating man, God described this creation ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31). We are created in the image and likeness of absolute goodness. However, because of our fallen nature, we are weighed down by concupiscence – the inclination to sin – and consequently are left with an unrestricted appetite for the enemy of good, i.e. evil.

Man in his eternal craving for all that is good, blinded by the darkness of untruth and weakened by hardness of heart (Matthew 19:8), gives in to something less than the good. Eve accepted the forbidden fruit, seeing that it was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise (Genesis 3:6). 

Before the first fall, man was at harmony with his maker. Everything cooperated with divine design. All of man’s faculties, his intellect and will, were well aligned to His will. The intellect and the will are the faculties of the soul. Why did God bless us with an intellect and a will? To know Him and to love Him. The object of the intellect is to know God and the object of the will is to love God. Unfortunately, after the fall, harmony got destroyed. The intellect was darkened and the will was subsequently weakened. The will was no more under the influence of the intellect. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41).

Man’s inherent longing for happiness urges him to pursue it in every possible way. One’s thoughts are strongly shaped by this unquenchable thirst. The world bombards us with suggestions of all that can make us happy. We tend to buy the precept that obtaining all that money can buy will yield proportional happiness. We end up spending on good food, clothing, shelter and enjoyment. We seek enjoyment in vacation, recreation, and entertainment. The undying demand for entertainment sharply fuels the unending supply of entertainment in the crazy world of media. 

The production of media content is endless. Even with a basic smartphone one can add to the dump of seemingly attractive content appealing to the eye. The problem with things being appealing to the eye is that even evil is presented as good – even darkness comes clothed in light. Those who mint money off media intentionally infuse content unhealthy for the soul, for their selfish monetary gains. 

Anything that can sway the soul away from God becomes a trap for the weak soul’s false delight. No wonder the average screen time of young people is of alarming magnitude. In the hope of finding something more satisfying, one ends up indulging in media habits which adversely affect the sanity of the soul. 

There is indeed a lot of filth out there in the dark world of media. But we are not created to drown ourselves in the pit of pitch. Whoever touches pitch will be contaminated by it (Sirach 13:1). ‘If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains’ (Cicero).

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness (Matthew 6:22-23). So, we need to control what we choose to see and what we choose to ignore. Do I have a ‘not to see’ list? The more we let ourselves be deceived by the evil world of darkness, the more we let the light diminish in our souls. The more we let darkness engulf us, the less clearly we see. The more diminished our clarity of vision, the more our souls succumb and stumble. 

If there is dirt on the windscreen of a car, the driver’s vision of what lies ahead is obstructed. One then needs to apply the wipers to clean the windscreen to be able to see clearly. When we watch a lot of filth on the incessant downpour of media, our souls accumulate dirt and with a blurred vision we struggle to live as children of light (Ephesians 5:8).

We all long to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of the soul. In feeble attempts to quench our thirst we might have given in to accepting unhealthy water. We tend to forget the giver of life, who can give us living water (John 4:10). To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life (Revelation 21:6).

Adding mud makes water muddy; what was once clear becomes blurred. To restore our blurred vision, we need to heed Jesus’ invitation, Come to me (Matthew 11:28). Let us draw ourselves close to the fountain of life (Psalm 36:9). Let us be fruit-bearing trees, planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:3). Let us try to refrain from turbid water (Jeremiah 2:18) offered by the wicked ways of the world. May we approach the divine wiper to cleanse our blurred lives: Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean (Matthew 8:2). Amen!