When I was little, I thought that water was free.  After all, it just fell from the sky as God’s gift, flowed in the streams near our house, and it was what Dad always had us order at restaurants.  So, in a youthful attempt to study the geological processes of erosion, I left the spigot on the side of my parents’ house on for a few hours, watching the water carve a canyon while I built cities beside my river.  I was oblivious to the growing delta of mud spreading across the driveway.  When Dad came home from work the first time I did that, well, he wasn’t the happiest.  But it was probably the third or fourth time that really got his goat.

Since then I’ve learned that while water should be a right it is too often a privilege and I’ve become more of a conservationist.  So this morning (like many other mornings), I made several trips carrying the water from the bathtub (inside) in a bucket and dumping it in the washing machine (outside).  When the washing machine is finished with it, it drains into a tub.  I then use that twice-grey water to water the garden or the flowers.  We also often collect the rinse water and use it for the next wash load.

But ultimately, it’s not about my paltry human efforts.  “Elijah was a man just like us, and he prayed, and it didn’t rain for three years.  Then he prayed again, and it rained.”  It is God who can overcome patterns of drought, send rain in its season, and cause springs to well up in the land.

Lord, water the lands you have made,
and give water to thirsty ground and thirsty throats,
living water to thirsty hearts.
Te nkarna e Yesu, atoomono.