Monday, minor miracles and water

It's back to work today. I'm headed out of town to cover a Water Management District hearing on a request to draw water out of the river for municipal use.

The fight is ongoing. Conservationists will be there to protest it. It's the beginning of a push to draw up to 260 million gallons a day (mgd) out of the little river. The conservationists will likely lose the fight. The matter has already gone before a state-administrative judge, who kicked the case back the Water Management District.

Another project, for a water-bottling plant to draw 500 mgd a day from wells drilled into the aquifer, will probably gain approval, too. That one isn't on today's agenda.

It is lunacy. Local governments are still promoting growth and development, while we're running out of usable water.

Here's the little miracle part:

Thursday, I was coming down with a cold. Friday morning, I was running a little temperature. The cough that hurts began to tear at my chest.

I kept praying, and drinking lots of water. I prayed through the noontime Good Friday service. I sipped water, as a guest pastor preached on "I thirst."

Friday evening, I took communion at the end of the service. I came home tired, but uplifted. I blogged, then to bed.

Around 4:30 in the morning, I woke up. A pervasive sense of wellbeing enveloped me. I lay in bed, luxuriating in it. After a while, I went back to sleep. I awoke with that same sense of wellbeing.

It's hard to explain that feeling. It's like a mountaintop experience -- knowing the Holy Spirit's immediate and enveloping presence, God's love washing over me. My awareness of it kicked up a few notches.

My cold symptoms were evaporating. There was no fever. The painful tightness in my chest was gone. Just a bit of a runny nose was all that was left. By Sunday, that was largely gone, too. I got through the service with repairing to the sacristy once to blow my nose. A miracle. I was able to participate in that Easter service. And it was special. Fr. R was full of the spirit, and it infected the congregation.

Now, this cold business may not seem like a miracle to a casual observer. But it is a miracle to me. It was God, expressing his love through the Eucharist and through water, which is life.

Which brings me back to today's topic: water.

It belongs to God. We are merely his stewards, looking after our master's Earth. He lets us use precious water to sustain life. How can we justify misusing it and destroying ecosystems and aquatic life, perhaps ultimately our own, in blindness and greed?

Lord, have mercy on us. Show us and our leaders what you would have us do.