My water filter change is overdue. When I moved here, I was told i was going to have the best water available, town water. I guess from living in other places in the country I thought everyone had "town water", 1 really don't recall my family having to dig a well since I was quite young. In any case, I thought that sounded very cool because I know many places add good stuff to their water like fluoride for your teeth, and in a place as politically charged as Massachusetts I was sure they would have quite high standards on how clean the water would be.

Imagine my surprise when the dishwasher started to "yellow" on the inside after only a couple years of living here. Deniese didn't mind it so much but I did, because I know what causes that. Yuk in your water supply. So, we got ourselves a water filter and added it to the line, right at the source where it comes into our house. That means even when I water the grass it gets the "good stuff." It just so happened our next door neighbor was over and was peeking into our basement, which I was finishing at the time, and spied the new filter. "Why did you do that?" he asked. I told him about what I suspected, that the water had some less than desirable stuff in it, and he kind of scoffed.

Well, I don't care where you get your water from chances are it has *some* gunk in it for a filter to catch. In just over a month our blindingly white filter (I got a filter assembly that has the clear case so you can inspect the filter itself any time) was so black it was SHINY black. I mean there must be some truly evil stuff in our water. When I took the water filter out, the stuff got on my hands and would not wash off, I had to wait for it to wear off. I brushed the side of the bucket with the filter, and the bucket is stained to this day. However, I have great confidence that the filter did its job. Yes, the town did their best in providing me with clean water but my using a filter really put me over the top in having clean water.

So here's the deal. I've got to have water, and the water I get is pretty good. But there's still some junk in there I need to filter out. I suppose I could have ignored it, and what would be the harm? I mean, my dishwasher turns yellow inside but is that so bad? Well, how about the long-term effect of me drinking the stuff? I don't think it will kill me, but it can't be good for me either. And this water came from the town supply, a place that I am supposed to trust.

The whole thing made me think of righteousness. I mean, the world has a fair amount of it "naturally". BLit it's polluted! So I can observe it, and draw lessons from it. I can see the handiwork of God all around me. However, I have to be careful that I filter out the lies and doctrines of men and just keep the good stuff. One might attend many bible classes, hey you might have read many of my bulletins, and we might have been able to draw lessons in truth from them. However, no matter how good my intentions, and no matter how good the intentions of the bible class teacher, there is likely still *some* gunk in there being taught. Speaking for myself, I am certainly not perfect!!! However, if we filter out even that by studying the bible for ourselves and letting it have the final say we can have confidence that we're only getting the good stuff. And the more we filter it, (the more we study), and the tighter the filter weaving is, (the closer we look in God's word), we'll have cleaner and cleaner water. And purer and purer righteousness.

The nice thing about using God's word as a filter is that it never gets clogged and never needs replaced, no matter how much yuk we block out of our lives with it. And when we use it as it's intended, nothing bad gets past it! Perfect!

Randy