The Water Bottle

I grew up in the south – not just south, but “deep south”. During the summer months down there the humidity is usually about the same as the temperature. 95 degree temperature usually meant 95 percent humidity even when it was not raining. You could walk outside with dry clothes on and walk back inside 15 minutes later with damp clothes. Basically, the summers were hot and sticky!

With weather like that, a kid would drink a lot of water. Of course, each glass of water required a clean glass. By the end of the day, I normally would have used 9 or 10 glasses – all of which were left sitting on the kitchen cabinet next to the sink.

My grandmother tried to convince me to use the same glass every time, but that didn’t work. We didn’t have a dishwasher, so my grandmother got very tired of washing all these glasses by hand. She finally came up with a solution. She took a small BBQ sauce bottle that was empty, rinsed it out, took the label off, and wrote my name on the bottle and the lid. Then she filled it with water and put it in the refrigerator.

This was my water bottle. I was allowed to drink straight from the bottle. As long as I kept it filled, I always had cold water to drink anytime I wanted it.

Sometimes my grandmother would put a second bottle in the refrigerator filled with sweet tea. There is just something about sweet, cold tea that makes you feel real good on a hot day. Most of the time when I had a choice between tea and water --- I drank the tea!

When I drank from my jug, I didn’t just sip it – I gulped it down. I would take the bottle of water or tea, turn it up, and not bring it down till the last drop was gone. I guess you could say that I was kind of a show-off.

On what seemed to be an extremely hot and sticky day, I was out in the yard playing. I was hot and sweating and decided to go inside for something to drink. Walking up the stairs to the back door I felt like I was crossing the desert. I couldn’t wait to get inside, open the refrigerator, and swallow a whole jug of water in one gulp.

I opened the refrigerator door and knew that I was the luckiest and happiest boy in the State. Right next to my water jug was a second jug --- I had some ice tea to drink!

I took the bottle from the rack, closed the refrigerator door, opened the bottle, and turned it straight up…. It only took me a couple of swallows to realize that something was wrong. The label on the bottle said tea and my eyes saw tea in the bottle – but this was NOT tea! It was bitter and it stunk! I spit out whatever it was that was in my mouth, dropped the glass bottle on the floor (yes, it broke) and started coughing.

My grandmother came running in the kitchen. There I was with a broken bottle at my feet, this tea colored stuff spilt (and spit) all over the hardwood floor and a look on my face that can’t be described. I explained to my grandmother what had happened – I was hot, I opened my tea bottle, and it was NOT TEA! I didn’t mean to drop the bottle – I didn’t mean to spit on the floor!

About that time, she recognized the smell that was filling the kitchen and stinking it up like some had just scared a couple of skunks. It was “RED VINEGAR”! Somehow, my tea bottle had gotten filled with VINEGAR!

My grandmother told me she was sorry and she didn’t know how that could happen, but the taste was still there in my mouth. I don’t know how many glasses of water, koolaid, and milk it took to get that taste out of my mouth. With the taste finally gone I went back outside to play while my grandmother finished cleaning up the mess.

A few hours later, I was thirsty again. I went back inside and opened the refrigerator. Again, there were two bottles – one marked tea and one marked water. I chose the water and left the tea there. No way was I going to take a chance at the label being wrong again.

Over the next few days, I always drank the water. I just couldn’t bring myself to try the tea. Every time I looked at the tea bottle, I got that bad taste in my mouth again.

My grandmother noticed that I wasn’t drinking tea and asked me why. I told her that every time I looked at it, I thought of the vinegar that I drank.

She sat me on the stool next to the kitchen sink and poured out the tea from my bottle. She rinsed out the bottle several times. The she took the tea pitcher from the refrigerator and poured 2 glasses of tea – one for her and one for me. She drank about half of hers and then told me to drink mine. I tasted it slowly … it was tea – and then drank it down. She filled my tea bottle from the pitcher and told me to drink some from it. I drank slowly.

Within a week or so, I was back to drinking tea from my tea bottle again. I remember that I was still slow to accept or trust the tea label for quite a while. It took time for me to regain my trust that what was really in that bottle was sweet and good for me.

What labels do you wear? Do you wear the label “Christian”? Do you wear the label “Royal Ranger”? If someone “opens your bottle”, will they find inside what the label on the outside says, or will it leave a “bad taste” in their mouth?

When someone walks into your church, outpost, home, or life --- do they get the sweet smell of the love of Christ or do they get bitterness? If they get bitterness, how long will it take them to get over it and trust somebody else that is wearing the label “Christian”?

In I Corinthians 8:9-12, Paul says: “(9)Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. (10)For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? (11)So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. (12)When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. (13)Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.”

We need to be careful that what we do and say reflects Christ in us. Being without Christ or Christian fellowship because of a bad experience is many times worse than being without ice tea!