The Great Bethlehem Water Caper

Water from your hometown well is always the sweetest - especially when you’re far from home!

Biyar Daoud - King David Wells, Bethlehem

David was a king-in-waiting – in hiding, actually, with a band of desperado friends. His home-town of Bethlehem had recently fallen into Philistine hands and David began to crave the best water in the world.

"Would I ever like a drink of water from the well at the gate of Bethlehem!” he sighed.

His daring friends secretly accepted the challenge, broke through enemy lines, secured a skein of water and carried it back to David - an exploit full of bravado and esteem for their good friend and leader. No doubt they told in vivid detail how they had pulled off the caper under the noses of the sleeping Philistines.

But for David, the hazards his comrades had faced to get this water for him, made the water sacred. It was no longer a consumable commodity. Drinking it would have reduced it to mere water, when it represented his friends life-blood. Only God was worthy of such a sacrifice. So instead of drinking the water, David poured it out reverently before the Lord.

It’s a timeless tale of friendship and heroic action and it shows how the most common thing like water can have meaning far deeper than the thing itself.

Joy to the World

It’s the Christmas carol that never intended to be one.

Joy to the World is Isaac Watt’s 1719 translation of the Psalm 98. But there’s nothing in that song about a baby or manger, about shepherds or angels.

It’s an ancient Hebrew song that summons the earth to shout for joy to God and burst into jubilant song because God is on the move! It calls on the sea to thunder an encore and rivers to add their applause in a rousing symphony that celebrates or anticipates the arrival of God’s wise and righteous rule over the earth.

Journey of the Magi

Whether you’re traveling this Christmas or staying home, I wish you the joy and wonder of
“a running stream and a water-mill.”

Let me explain. In his poem “The Journey of the Magi” T. S. Eliot describes the difficult journey of the Magi across the deserts of Arabia on their way to Bethlehem:
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year . . .
The very dead of winter."

The camels were uncooperative, he says, lying down in the melting snow, the night-fires continually going out, the towns unfriendly and dirty, charging high prices, and always the voices of derision, mocking their journey. Until . . .

You Can't Stay Under-Water

It happened in San Francisco on December 13, when I was twelve years old.

My family watched without protest as someone plunged me under water, performing a ritual death and burial. They held their breath - as I held mine - while water filled in over my face.

In another place and time, that ritual might have ended my days. Fish breathe quite freely in water, but people don’t. If death had been the object that day, I would not be writing these words.

But in baptism, death and burial are just prologue to resurrection. When the ritual was over and I stood again on my own feet, everyone celebrated.

Pure as the Driven Snow

Snow – it’s the proverbial measure of clean, bright purity -- as in Snow White and Ivory Snow laundry soap.

I like Mae West’s quip “I used to be pure as snow but I drifted.”

We’ve all drifted, Mae.  Anyone who says otherwise is giving themselves a snow job.  Politicians do it with words; most of us cover up with denial.

King David knew that you can’t cover up forever.  His resume includes a shameful shabby episode – when he seduced his friend’s wife and then arranged the murder of the cuckolded man.  He pretended innocence as long as he could, but eventually broke through his denial.  

Winter With a Vengeance!

It isn’t even officially winter, but already Europe and North America have been walloped by white stuff.

Skiers and school-kids love it, but truckers and the rest of us, usually not so much.

But snow does make cool pictures!

Snow is water vapor art, every flake unique, according to physicist Kenneth Libbrecht, the world’s foremost snow crystal photographer.  Check out his snowflake slide-show in Scientific American .

Peace Like a River

The Peace River in
northern Alberta is named for a point on the river where the indigenous Cree and Beaver people smoked the peace pipe and made a treaty to settle a decades-long feud.

They agreed that the Cree would remain south of the river and the Beaver people would stay on the north.


Apparently, good rivers can make good neighbors.

Isaiah, Israel’s 8th century poet-seer, saw his community as a troubled river – shallow, filled with debris, political intrigue, judicial corruption, morally polluted. He predicted environmental disaster as well as political and economic doom ahead.

Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters

Pyramid Falls, B.C.

First . . . a fine photograph thanks to my brother Phil in Vancouver.

Next . . . this curious proverb to go with it:

Cast your bread upon the waters; you will find it again after many days.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-2

And with that, my dear readers, I invite you to help write today's post.

► What do think this proverb means?

► Have you ever experienced this to be true?

► Doesn't it seem a bit chancey to take risks like this?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.   A quick sign-in and a spam-screen question - and you'll be casting your food-for-thought upon the wonderful waters of the blogosphere!.

The Cost of Water

What does water cost? And who should pay? Is water a human right or a human need? How should water be financed?

Two contrasting images in the Bible give a hint:
► prisoners forced to buy their own drinking water
► a free-entry hospitality suite for every thirsty person on the planet!

The first story comes from the heart-wrenching lament of Jewish prisoners-of-war in 586 BCE when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, raped her women and burned the Temple. Among the atrocities they endured, we read,

We have to pay to drink our own water.

Even our firewood comes at a price.

We're slaves, bullied and bowed,

worn out and without any rest.

Lamentations 5:4 The Message

A Drop in the Bucket

Where does the phrase “a drop in the bucket” originate?

Last Sunday was the first of Advent, the start of the Christmas season. In keeping with her Swedish tradition, my wife Tiffany lit the first of four candles that mark the weeks leading to Jul - Christmas Eve. The first candle speaks of Hope - and the ancient promise of a Saviour – who would answer the hopes and fears of all the years.


On Friday we attended a concert that included among other pieces, the selection from Handel’s Messiah “He Shall Feed his Flock" about God shepherding his people –

He tends his flock like a shepherd:

He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;

he gently leads those that have young.

Today I located those words in Isaiah - Chapter 40 and was struck by the water imagery that immediately follows the Shepherd text.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Shepherds have to think constantly about water for their flock - water, grass and safety are the big three needs of sheep.

A Fruitful Vine Climbing over a Wall

The dying old man whispered his words blessing upon each of his sons. At last he came to Joseph – the one who had made the whole family proud.

Joseph will be a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.”
See Genesis 49:22-26 for the full text of this blessing

Joseph’s great mission in life had been the preserving of life, but it had not been an easy mission. God had preserved him from a dry cistern in the desert, from the schemes of treacherous brothers and slave-traders, from dark forgotten dungeons of Egypt. Joseph came into fame, fortune and economic power, but used these not for private advantage, but to be the saviour of his generation.

The Wild Kisses of a Lion

In the last chapter of The Silver Chair. . . .

Jill and Eustace stood beside a beautiful fresh-flowing stream in bright sunshine. The only sound was heart-breaking funeral music from a faraway world. Aslan and the two children looked into the water.

"There on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay the king, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept."  Like Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, "even Aslan wept - great Lion-tears."

If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know the sadness that is deeper than words. The river of death is the inevitable end of every person’s life, but Lewis shows us that Death does not have the last word.

Aslan told Eustace to bring a rapier-sharp thorn and pierce his lion’s paw. A great drop of blood, “redder than all redness you have ever seen” splashed into the stream over the dead body of the king. And a transformation began.

The funeral music stopped. The king’s white beard turned fresh and then vanished. His sunken cheeks became round and red. His wrinkled face brightened - until the king leapt out of the water with boyish laughter and flung his arms around the Lion. “He gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.”

In Honor of C.S. Lewis . . .

. . . who died on this date, 47 years ago, November 22, 1963, a week before his 65th birthday.

"Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.

Love. Think. Speak.

Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

The Magician’s Nephew, p. 108

There are lots of wonderful water scenes in the Narnia Chronicles, but one of my favorites is the story of Jill in The Silver Chair.  Jill is desperately thirsty and hears running water nearby. She ventures into a forest in search of the stream and when she sees it, she is afraid to approach the stream because a huge lion is sitting between her and the stream.

'Are you not thirsty?’ asked the Lion.
‘I’m dying of thirst,’ said Jill.
‘Then drink,’ said the Lion.

Testing and Resting

Deserts are relentless – and humans are not well-adapted to desert demands.

As the Israeli tribes travelled deeper into the wilderness of Sinai toward their promised home, their principal need was water. Once, when the need was especially acute, God told Moses to smack a nearby rock. To everyone’s astonishment, water gushed out. God knows the map-line of every underground

aquifer and how to provide for his people. That happened more than once as God proved his faithfulness to his people.  Israel immortalized God's power in poetry and song:

He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas;
He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.
Psalm 78:15-16

But song alone can’t change character and Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test, complaining constantly, testing God’s patience, quarreling with God. Moses even named a couple of memorable landmarks Massah (i.e. Testing) and Meribah (i.e. Quarreling) to mark these low-points in their spiritual odyssey.

Bitter Waters Become Sweet

Three days searching the parched desert for water – and then suddenly – the glint of a spring-fed pool! It was no mirage. Cheers of excitement filled the air.

But when the Exodus refugees finally reached the water, it was undrinkable, brackish with mineral salts, bitter and foul to the taste. Marah - bitter waters! Frustration and disappointment over-flowed in a torrent of anger and despair and the cruel sense of being betrayed by God.

As leader, Moses cried out to God and God showed him how to remediate the water so they could drink it. From aching thirst, … to soaring hopes, … crashing disappointment and finally… refreshment!

That’s the surface story. But there’s always an under-current of wonder flowing through these water stories.

Desert Training

The Book of  Exodus tells an epic story – the transforma-tion of refugees from mud-pit slaves to chosen people of God – but it’s a roller-coaster odyssey, and they were slow learners!

After an astonishing deliverance at the Red Sea, these refugees trekked three days into the desert of Sinai without finding water. What a difference three days can make.

Yahweh had promised to adopt them as family, to be their God and bring them to a land of safe haven. Now the parched desert seemed to mock the promises of the invisible God.

But there’s more to the desert than meets the eye – and they were not to be the last refugees in history to be ravaged by thirst.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

It’s a story for anyone who has ever been caught between danger and disaster, between a rock and a hard place. It's the ancient story of Exodus.

Beyond their wildest dreams a tribe of slaves found themselves free at last, heading east on the Desert Road towards their long-promised home.

Two days later, camped by Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds, they saw the dust of Pharaoh’s army with 600 chariots bearing down on them. Yam Suph posed a formidable barrier - too wide to circumvent and too deep to cross; it blocked their only path of escape. If they were chosen people, they appeared chosen to die.

What Really Made the Nile Turn Red?

It was the first of the Ten Plagues – and it wasn’t pretty. The great River was bleeding and undrinkable. In a land with no rain, people were desperate. It was an ecological disaster – and it became even worse.

Hungary's Red Sludge
Photo Credit: Newscom

There were no industries to blame – no BP Oil Spill, no Hungarian Alumina tailings leak. This was a natural disaster with serious religious undertones.

Scientifically, there are various perfectly natural explanations. The Nile normally floods every year in late summer. If the annual flood were excessively high, it may have brought microorganisms such as Pfiesteria piscicida which could redden and poison the river and cause conditions that would kill the fish. Epidemiological theories and counter-theories abound.

Through Water to New Life

An un-named infant floats precariously in a papyrus basket among the reeds along the Nile, condemned by imperial edict, guilty of being a 3-month-old Hebrew man-child. Miraculously, he’s rescued by an Egyptian princess who names him Moses meaning ‘water-son’ or ‘drawn out of water’.

The Finding of Moses,  Edwin Long, 1886

He will grow up to become liberator of the Hebrew slaves, but first he has to undergo his own rescue, his own exodus, experiencing on a personal scale the rescue-through-water* which God would later accomplish through him for the whole nation at the Red Sea.

Many commentators note the courageous women who are heroines of this story: the Egyptian midwives who defy the Pharaoh’s edict, the mother and sister of Moses who risk their lives to protect him, the daughter of Pharaoh who finances his day-care and gives him his name. They lived in a patriarchal world, but it's impossible to ignore the vital role these women played.

Genocide and Hope

During a horrific 100 days in the Spring of 1994, almost a million Tutsi and Hutu men, women and children were slaughtered and crudely dumped in Rwanda’s Kagera River. The current carried their bodies - shot, hacked, clubbed or burned - over the waterfall down towards the quiet waters of Lake Victoria.

The history of genocide has deep roots in the rivers of Africa.  The first chapter of The Book of Exodus tells how a cultured Pharaoh in the 18th or 19th dynasty, tried to obliterate the surging numbers of Hebrew people living in his land.

Let Justice Flow Like Rivers

 Where the river flows, life abounds. Ezekiel 47:9  The Message

Satellite images illustrate the vital importance of water in the Egyptian desert. From ancient times the civilizations of Egypt have depended on the Nile River for its agriculture and commerce.

So vital was the water that ancient Egyptians deified the river. They called the Nile-god 'Hapi'. Every year in late summer, Hapi’s breasts over-flowed with the surplus of the rains in the highlands to south. Hapi made Egypt wealthy and the affluent enjoyed security and sophistication. The gods seemed to smile on Egypt.

Israel saw the world differently.

Nile Nightmare

The nightmare jolted him awake. Pharaoh stood beside his beloved Nile as seven fat cows climbed out of the river and begin grazing along the bank. All was well until, ominously, seven scrawny cows came out of the same river, stalked the healthy cows and devoured them.

Cannibal cows! – a bad portent – something nasty was afoot on the banks of the sacred Nile.  Pharaoh woke with a start.

Engulfed

It is the darkest psalm in the Bible, anguished from start to finish. God is hidden and silent; the singer is terrified, abandoned, engulfed by despair.

Your terrors surround me like a flood;

they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;

darkness is my closest friend.

Psalm 88:14-18

Like being lost at sea in thick fog, these deep-water terrors describe clinical depression - an ordeal of extreme mental suffering and hopelessness.

We might wonder what a poem like this is doing in a book of faith like the Bible.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Water is nature’s first mirror. It reflects mountains, trees and sky

to create some of creation's most evocative art. 


Water photo-copies the reality around it and mirrors it back to us with fresh perspective and insight.

In Aesop’s fable, a dog with a bone sees his reflection in the river; greedy for the bone in that other dog’s mouth, the dog barks – and his bone drops into the river. It's not just a story about dumb dogs, it’s a cautionary tale about human greed.

The classics also tell about Narcissus who fell in love with his own image in water and became incapable of loving anyone else – a warning about the paralysis of vanity and self-absorption.

Water Into Fine Wine

I spent the week-end cleaning old wine bottles in preparation for filling them this week.

Water is a great cleaning agent, but it has even nobler roles in the world of wine.

For Better or Worse . . .
It was a wedding host’s worst nightmare - and a bad omen for the marriage. At mid-point in the reception, the wine ran out. The celebration sagged and the guests would soon start leaving. It smacked of bad planning, embarrassing poverty or, worse, shabby hospitality.

Enter the mystery guest. Without fanfare, almost before anyone knew what had happened, Jesus replenished the depleted store of wine, and the party continued.


Water, Love and Marriage

This third post on Water, Love and Marriage is a strange but beautiful picture of a bride getting cleaned up for her wedding – and surprisingly, it’s the bridegroom himself, at enormous personal cost and sacrifice, who bathes her and dresses her in dazzling silk.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word. . . so she might be unstained, without wrinkle or any other blemish.   Ephesians 5:25-27

My good friend Glenn Smith in Montreal, says that Canadians have a hard time grasping this vibrant water metaphor. Canada has an abundance of water - 7 percent of the world's renewable supply of freshwater and 20 percent of Earth’s frozen freshwater locked in glaciers and the polar ice cap.

Dance With the One Who Brung Ya

In keeping with my Water and Marriage theme of the week – my anniversary being tomorrow, it’s not just Shania Twain who sings about staying with the one who brought her to the dance.

The ancient wisdom of Israel also recognized the folly of infidelity. (Proverbs 5:15-17)

Drink water from your own cistern,

running water from your own well.

Should your springs overflow in the streets,

your streams of water in the public squares?

Let them be yours alone,

never to be shared with strangers.

This proverb knows how enticing forbidden love can be; it urges us to guard our hearts and marriage, to resist the beguiling call to squander our sexual energies with strangers. Seeking intimacy outside your marriage is sure to ruin the dance, foul the well or rot the staves of your rain-barrel.

Many Waters Cannot Quench Love

Four years ago this week . . . Tiffany and I exchanged vows of marriage, vows of life-long devotion to each other.

Our ceremony included these words about water and love from Song of Solomon 8:7:

Many waters cannot quench love;

Neither can floods drown it.

Lots of water has streamed under our bridge since then, but it has not quenched the joy or love in our hearts.

Fresh Rain

It’s every teacher’s dream . . .  her students soaking up inspired teaching like thirsty grass.

Parents and poets and preachers have the same hope and dream. Nothing sweeter than hungry minds feasting on your words - that’s why we talk and write.


Moses was a teacher. He spent a lifetime walking with God – decades beyond his burning bush experience – not just talking his faith, but living it, modeling it in the rough and tumble of unfolding history. Now as a farewell gift to his people he wrote a song - Deuteronomy 32 - about the timeless ways and love of God.

Buried Alive - Almost!

Photo Courtesy of BBC News

In honor of 33 Chile miners and their families . . .

As one man after another emerged from a shaft in the dark earth and embraced his loved ones, we all choked back tears of joy.

Trapped so deep under bed-rock and then, against all hope, plucked from the grave - it must seem for them like being resurrected from death.

"Deep calls to deep", the poet wrote. Something deep within us connected us to these men and their families - the drama of rescue, the relief of not being buried alive. But there is something more. The human soul is a deep and mysterious like a gold-mine or a deep-water aquifer.

Thanksgiving

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.

His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:1

Tiffany and I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on Saturday, leisurely canoeing a stretch of the Grand River south of Kitchener under a cloudless sky.

We confirmed the great exultation “the earth is full of God’s unfailing love” especially the trees, radiant in October extravaganza, displaying God’s majesty in orange, ruby and gold, mirrored in the river inviting us to join their 'Ode to Joy' in awe and gratitude.

Serenity

"You have made us for yourself

and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

Augustine, 398 CE



Photo "The Shepard" by  Floriana Barbu

The shepherd-poet David describes this God-given rest from anxiety and fear through the metaphor of a sheep quietly grazing under the watchful care of the shepherd.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

Psalm 23:2-3

Pastures and streams provide the essentials - food and drink - for sheep. After grazing in the meadow sheep lie down to ruminate – their appetite contented and their security protected by the vigilant shepherd. It’s a picture of shalom.

If the early morning grass is dew-laden, the sheep have no need for streams, but the sun in Palestine can burn off the dew quickly and then sheep need additional water.

The shepherd leads his flock to still waters where it is easy for them to drink. Satisfaction, tranquility, peace.

River of Joy

Israel’s Psalm 46 is a study in contrasts. It begins with mountains collapsing into violent seas and then quickly changes to a cityscape graced by a peaceful river.

Let the oceans roar and foam.

Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!

Interlude 

A river brings joy to the city of our God,

the sacred home of the Most High.

God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed.

Many cities are defined by a river – think of the Thames in London, the Seine flowing through Paris, New York’s Hudson or Montreal on the St. Lawrence.

Impressive cities, impressive water-ways, natural beauty and economic engines. But Jerusalem has no river.

The only naturally occurring water Jerusalem enjoys, besides rain, is the Gihon spring on the east and the tiny conduit that carries its water into the city to the pool of Siloam. It’s barely a stream, how could such a river be a source of joy?

Fearless at the Cliff Edge

On a stormy winter night in 1639, the residents of Dunluce Castle on the coast of Northern Ireland were entertaining neighbors.

Dunluce is Gaelic for “strong fort” - and doubly strong it was even as the raging sea clawed at the basalt cliff on which the 12th century castle was built.

The surf pounded the rock that night until without warning the cliff-face crumbled and the kitchen wing of the castle collapsed into the sea plunging servants to their death.

Storm Master

In March 1992, ten foot waves crashed into downtown Tiberius on the shore of Lake Galilee, causing significant damage.

As lakes go, Galilee isn’t very large – 13 miles long and 8 miles wide, but violent storms can erupt very quickly as cool air rushes down from the adjacent mountains – the Arbel on the west, seen in the photo here, and the Golan Heights 1200 meters above the lake on the east .

The disciples were seasoned fisherman familiar with the lake’s turbulent ways. They knew how to handle her storms. On one occasion, Jesus was asleep in the boat when the winds hit.

Storm Glory

Psalm 29 traces the fury of a thunderstorm blowing in from the sea.

It whips through the northern forests, tears across the land and into the Negev in the south.

It splits oak trees asunder and shatters the mighty cedars of Lebanon. It strips the forests bare.


The singer revels in the majestic roar of waves and thunder, howling wind, crack of lightning and reverberation of trees crashing to the ground. Nature is majestic, wild and breath-taking!

Water, wind and weather dwarf our pride. Sailors, mountain-climbers and airline pilots learn to respect nature’s laws. But this storm-song tells us more.

All that the Rain Brings

I will send rain on your land in its season,

both autumn and spring rains,

Deuteronomy 11:14

At the Canadian Clay and Glass Museum in Waterloo, Ontario I saw a sculpture titled All That the Rain Brings by British Columbia ceramic artist Mary Fox.

Let me try to describe it and interpret what it seems to me the title and the sculpture suggest about rain.

All That The Rain Brings
Sculptor Mary Fox
Photographer: Janet Dwyer

The uppermost of three small bowls is tilted down-wards. Rain is sheer gift. It comes from above and what it brings is life-giving. It supports us biologically as surely as the wavy ceramic column supports the bowl physically and artistically.

The downward flow of the three bowls follows the flow of rain from cloud to earth and streams and back to the sea. The three bowls suggest multiple ways that rain sustains our lives physically, economically, spiritually.  We use water for drinking, washing, cooking, agriculture, industry and recreation.

The bowls are positioned erratically suggesting that the rain is not a neat and tidy process. We can’t control when the rains come – they may be late or early - doesn't rain often seem inconvenient? -  sometimes the rain is too much or too little. None of the bowls is level as if to remind us that we can’t hold on to water.

This sculpture looks to me like a haggard old woman – and perhaps that’s what we are as we wait for rain. We do our best to catch it and keep it, and we manage it as we can, but at best we’re at the mercy of the elements. We are receptors of nature’s bounty.

And maybe that’s part of what rain brings us – an extravagant gift, a humble reminder of our identity and lessons in patience, humility, gratitude and . . . wonder! As dramatically as rain brings the dry land back to life, so this gift - wonderful in every way - renews hope and energizes life. I'm pretty glad about that.

Generous Source of all that the rain brings,

how gladly we welcome your gift of rain. 

How vital it is -- and yet how anonymous You are.

Teach us your name, your largesse, your modesty.

Help us learn to tilt our bowls to others

as freely as You have tilted yours towards us. Amen

If interested, you can see more work by Mary Fox at the Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, Ontario - http://www.jonathons.ca/

Tipping Point

Hurricane Igor slammed into Newfoundland this week with ferocious winds and rain.

They saw it coming but were powerless to stop it or steer it out to sea.

An 80 year old man was swept away in the flood along with bridges, roads and homes.

We wonder. . . and we ask Why?

Job and his friends wore themselves out pondering the 'Why?' question. Sometimes our best explanations don’t fit.
Eventually God steps into their conversation and asks more questions:

Clouds

It’s overcast and rainy today; the sky is gray.

But last week under a clear sky and the setting sun, I watched magnificent clouds for half an hour. They curled and curved under the flow of wind and shifted through red, violet and purple shades.

Nature’s poetry in motion.

I remember last year flying through a lightening storm over the Appalachians, as electricity forked from one cloud to another, lighting up the sky in an exhilarating display of power and surprise.

Into Thin Air

NOTE - This particular post by far the most popular entry for 2010 on this Wonder of Water blog. I'd love to know why. Please add your thoughts below.

It happens in coffee shops day and night around the world . . . 

It wafts from the breath of every person on the planet . . .    

Mist rises from golf courses and wetlands ... Steam soars from industry stacks and tree-tops ... 

Water evaporates from the Bay of Bengal and transpires from plants.

Evapo-transpiration feeds the hydrologic cycle – that process that circulates water, purges the air and nourishes life on earth.