By Grace Oji
"The water that when it appears only the air stands in it's way above as it passes through to where it finally comes to take rest. It's always very cold and multiplies greatly the soap on our bodies when we're having a bath. It's one of the purest. Find this water and bring it to me."
The doting father admonished his three teenage daughters Noelle, Neve, and Nelma. He was a veteran fresh from war who raised his family in the countryside in a village.
Neve was the curious child of the girls; the others were not such to ardently desire a solution to anything that seemed like a mystery. She bade her sisters good luck as they went to find 'this purest water' with little effort as it was their nature to do while she left to keep company with the mute neighbour. She knew she had to first solve the riddle to know the right source from which to fetch. The lady nextdoor was a relative of theirs who was the brain behind answering most of father's riddles.
The weather was turning grey and the mute lady's plates were freshly used, she offered to wash them all and was granted her request. The ample amount of soap she added to the freezing water lathered away into a bountiful supply of foam, she needed excess water to rinse thoroughly. She sighed and sported a quick grin on her face; the answer she knew was at hand, she needed only to ask the lady.
An hour later the girls and their parents were at the dinning for lunch and the rain began to fall so heavy. Neve left their presence and returned with her cupful to place before their father. They all could tell she fetched from the rain.
"What if there was no rain?"
"Then I wouldn't have been able to fulfill father's wish, mother. And I'm ready to hear what he has to say about our work in solving his riddle."
He placed the three cupfuls together and asked the girls to state their sources. Noelle went down to a nearby stream and Nelma to the community well and Neve from the heavy downpours.
After which he handed Neve a single pen and declared her the one who discerned rightly the truth of the riddle. The source he referred to in the riddle was the rain, it falls from the height of the clouds down to earth, it's temperature dropping towards freezing point, free of mineral impurities and unhealthy substances unless it met with dust in the air and rooftops and toxic waste which was nothing to arouse worry as they had no factory in close range to affect the rain falling around them.
While they were yet chewing he likened the water to Christ as the ever flowing fountain that never runs dry and the three cups to the variants of Christ. If there is the true Christ then there are false ones and you can tell by the fruits they bear and their source.
The stream was a place where some washed their clothes and disposed off human waste, the well often bore debris within, while the rain came from the sky where there's no dirty influence of the the things on land. The rainwater's purity he likened to the truth of Christ while the rest he made to represent the lies and false christs.
He opened up his Bible before them and encouraged all to be curious to know and follow The Truth just as Neve was rather than go with any wind that wished to blow.
Not all water is healthy just because it's water, therefore not all that use the Name of God are true.
"Well done beloved, I love the way you always teach the kids. Now let's eat."
Thus he concluded and the girls conspired to give him a continuous applause, they were accustomed to his unique teaching methods and had one more lesson to take to bed at night.
The End
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