Water Cycle

Round and around it goes, steaming up as vapor and then falling as rain or snow. It’s the hydrologic cycle and it goes on endlessly day after day, night after night all over the world. A billion tons of water every minute - up and down. Every day about 12% of the vapor in the atmosphere falls to the earth and is replaced by a fresh supply.

And everywhere this enormous gift of rain or snowfall accomplishes a variety of essential services for our earth by cleansing the air, moderating the temperature and, most obviously, nourishing the plants and animals on the earth.

World Wetlands Day

I used to think that February 2 was simply Groundhog Day.

But apparently it’s also World Wetlands Day – a day to celebrate and appreciate the rich bio-diversity and economic benefits of an under-appreciated wonder of water. Forty years ago on this date, the world signed the Ramsar Convention to protect the world’s wetlands.

I had never heard about Ramsar until this year. I used to think of wetlands simply as wastelands – ugly, mosquito-breeding eyesores on the landscape. I considered them like the Dead Marshes near Mordor in Lord of the Rings whose mists and vapors gave off a terrible stench.

Actually, wet-lands serve us very well. Mud-flats and mangrove swamps buffer the coastline and reduce erosion. Swamps, bogs, marshes and fens are huge sponges that absorb flood-water, filter out pollutants and hold them in the soil, improving water quality. They filter rainwater run-off, minimizing the silting of rivers and streams.

No Shortage of Water

Moses sounds like a travel agent. . . After leading his people across the desert to the threshold of the Promised Land, he gives them a glowing description of the land before them.

The LORD is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. Deuteronomy 8:7

It is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it. Deuteronomy 11:11-12

After forty years in the dry desert this sounded like paradise - rain-water, ground-water and surface water in abundance, streams and pools and springs - a farmer’s paradise for sure - and a hydro-geologist’s dream.

Cool Mountain Streams

Ten of Asia’s largest rivers begin in the Himalayan glacial fields. It is the largest supply of frozen water on the planet after the two polar regions - sometimes called "the third pole". The ice-melt from these vast reservoirs helps feed over 2 billion people - a third of the earth. Psalm 104 celebrates God's power and love as demonstrated in fresh-water mountain streams.


He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
Psalm 104:10-12

Photo courtesy of Pauline Watson, Lethbridge Alberta

Proportionately rivers and streams are a miniscule drop in the global water bucket. Over 97% of the world’s water is ocean and most of the rest lies frozen in snow-pack or glaciers or stored under-ground in aquifers. But there’s still a lot left and a small portion of that – about 13,000 cubic kilometers – flows down the Amazon, Nile, Congo and Mississippi, the Danube and Rhine, the Yangtze and Yellow, the St Lawrence, Volga, Ganges and Brahmaputra, MacKenzie, Murray and Mekong, the Rio Grande and the thousands of tributaries that feed them and hundreds of other rivers like them, draining the highlands to irrigate the thirsty plains below.

Vast ecosystems depend on these rivers. Grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees grow in the water or along the shore; insects swarm above them; fish ply the currents, graze the stony river-bed, and procreate in quiet places while other fish come in from the ocean to spawn in ponds upstream; birds feed on the grasses or fish or insects; snakes and frogs, turtles and alligators and mammals large and small quench their thirst or satisfy their hunger from the river’s bounty. All these inter-act in a dynamic balance of Nature. All of them call the river ‘home’.

Humans depend on rivers for food, drinking water and sanitation - why so many cities grow up along rivers. Rivers serve industry, commerce, travel and recreation. And the aesthetic beauty of rivers, whether the thundering majesty of Niagara or the peaceful quiet of a woodland stream - rivers are one of God’s wonder-filled gifts for nourishing the human soul!

But the Tibetan glaciers are shrinking – rapidly – and I wonder . . . what is it all going to look like a hundred years downstream from here? And I wonder how to pray for those who depend on these waters. Any thoughts?

Psalm 104 – Part Three