The legend of Noah and the flood, and Jesus' miraculous stilling of the storm, are both stories of fear of water and fear of drowning. We are indeed afraid of drowning; most of us would admit it. Too much water scares us. But go to the opposite extreme, too little water, and hardly anyone is afraid. Who ever thinks of dying of thirst? I guess you'd have to live on the desert or maybe back in the old sailing days of dead calms and thirst-crazed sailors. I don't suppose many of us have ever thought of dying of thirst.
About the nearest we can come to feeling thirst is when we watch an old Wagon Train movie on TV, or one about a posse of cowboys on the desert. Sooner or later, in those films we see John Wayne or Gary Cooper under a relentless sun, crawling on hands and knees toward a water hol…