Blue Bucket Life

In most Indian households there is a large plastic bucket and a small matching jug in the bathroom. Mostly they are blue. And generally a bathroom or toilet is called a washroom here. Even if there is great plumbing and a proper shower, many people still simply default to having their daily wash by filling the bucket and sluicing the water over themselves with the jug. You get to be quite expert quite quickly. I can shampoo my hair, leave in conditioner and have enough water left to rinse everything off and use the dregs to flush the toilet. Sometimes places you visit and stay don’t have a washroom but have an outside tap in a small shed. There the same basic principles of blue bucket washing apply. 

You really begin to understand the powerful imagery of water in scripture. We often talk about cups of cold water - but the ability to be able to wash in it and be clean perhaps less so. When Jesus reminds Simon the pharisee that he had not brought water to wash his feet it might read as some symbolic mis-step on the part of the host. But clean water to wash in is such a personal and meaningful gift. The roads our Lord walked through Israel were hot and dusty and the offer by his hosts at the journey’s end of water to wash and be refreshed would be so very welcome. The woman in Luke’s record who then came and washed his feet with her tears combined the practical and spiritual. After each long day of preaching and teaching and giving of every part of himself Jesus would have been so glad of cool water to bathe and restore that sense of calm that the act of washing brings. 

We are used to running deep baths, maybe banging on the bathroom door to tell teenagers to get out of the shower. But here in India and across much of the rest of the world, water to wash in is precious and you can’t always rely on it being available. So a glimpse of a blue bucket in the corner on the floor of a tiny washroom is always going to make me happy. And thankful to our God for its gift. ‘Jesus said to the woman, Your faith has saved you, go in peace’ Luke 7 v 50.