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.
One of its most important functions is to move ocean water to mountain-tops where gravity then draws it down through rivers or aquifers.

What it accomplishes along the way is fascinating, cracking open rock fissures and releasing minerals from stone, flushing wetlands. The net benefit of rain and snow is not just the sum total of its various functions. It actually has a multiplier effect. Rainfall leverages a host of related natural environmental outcomes. In excess, it causes avalanches, landslides and floods. Combined with wind it brings blizzards and hurricanes.

But rain also makes possible every form of life on the planet. We drink it and wash in it. It makes corn grow which we can eat today or save and use as seed to multiply the harvest next year. If the rains come in time, apple trees do both – providing both fruit to eat and seeds to sow. Clover turns rain into nectar which bees manufacture into honey, pollinating fields in the process. Oaks turn rain and soil into lumber and acorns and a home for starlings.

This marvelous network of nature is so natural we hardly stop to think about it. But in light of such a beautifully-integrated and finely-tuned universe, the psalms urge us to respond to the Creator in recognition, praise and gratitude.

Sing out your thanks to the LORD;
sing praises to our God with a harp.
He covers the heavens with clouds,
provides rain for the earth, and
makes the grass grow in mountain pastures.
He gives food to the wild animals
and feeds the young ravens when they cry.
Psalm 147:7-9 NLT

Photo Sources:
Evaporation - David Knight, Algonquin Park
Rain in Mountains ... Cornfield ... Bee in Blossom