the magic tap

"The water pressure is dropping!"

This statement gets used at our house every day lately, 

and I rush to fill a tub to carry us through lunch time. 

We've had very little rain, and the river is low, and the land is parched with thirst,

and dust clouds blow billows through our front windows,

while my dust cloths do endless duty inside, trying to effect some semblance of clean.

In an effort to conserve what there is of the water, the city is daily shutting off our supply - 

sometimes at 8 in the morning, sometimes at 11, sometimes in the evening - 

for an hour, or maybe 4 hours at a time.

But we've noticed that, even if the water in the entire house is out,

this one tap inside the downstairs shower seems to continue to run for just a little while longer.

Michael calls it my 'magic tap.'

How often do we think to sincerely thank God for water?

For the beautiful, cleansing, refreshing water that flows ceaselessly from our taps?

Heartfelt thanks that it's clean;

fit to quench our thirst without needing to be boiled?

Our water outages are an inconvenience, yes.  

It's a challenge to do a load of laundry without running water, 

or to make a pot of vegetable soup,

or to shower after soccer practice.

But the outages also have been a means to grow my thankfulness for this precious gift of water,

and for taps that carry it straight into our home.

Much of the world has no such luxury.

But I do see the good side of water now. 

How good it is when you're really thirsty, 

how it glitters and gurgles! 

How alive it is! 

~G.K. Chesterton