Well, we only have so much room to store the water, and in fact, like the manna from heaven, it goes bad if you keep it too long, even after filtering. So this morning, we were facing maybe one more pot of good coffee and no rain in sight for the next week on Barometer Bob. I started thinking that one of our neighbors, who isn't here right now, had a big bottle of spring water in his house, and I have the key. I know he wouldn't mind if I just went down there and collected a liter or so to keep us a few more days. So down I went with one of our juice bottles and filled it up.

As I was walking back out his driveway, I got more convicted with every step. The Holy Spirit was not happy with this. I stopped and thought a moment: okay, Bob would give me a bottle of water if I asked him, but in fact I didn't ask. It's his store-bought water and this is just plain stealing. And no thief ever inherited the Kingdom of Heaven. I turned around and put it back, every drop. Stealing a liter or a tablespoon was still stealing. I realized that I had to just trust in the Lord and after all, I could get along on well-water coffee just fine! Why should I throw away my inheritance for a cup of coffee?

Back at the house with the empty bottle, Bonnar, my lovely fiancee, asked what happened. I was wondering all the way back to the house how I was going to explain to her what had happened, and had decided I needed to be straight about it. It would have been easy to lie, and say there wasn't any, or that I had "just decided" not to. But I managed to tell her what really happened. She just kinda took that in, but agreed that it did constitute stealing.

Now, I do not make deals with God. So all I had on my mind when I left that spring water was a general willingness to trust Him, as I said. But later in the morning, I was out collecting wild flowers when I was surprised to feel some raindrops. Man, I just lit up, and said, "Lord, it would be really nice of you to give us enough of a shower here, out of the blue so to speak, to fill up the water bottle I didn't fill this morning. That would be a nice testimony to Bonnar."

Well you know the Lord (I hope!). It kept sprinkling lightly until I got back home, planted my flowers in a bed I've been keeping for indigenous plants, and then the rain steadily increased. We not only filled our two five-gallon catchment buckets, but as many quart containers as we could find. We were putting them straight into the filter and filled up a couple of our juice bottles without even touching the big buckets! We cannot contain the bounty. The rain is still falling as I write this. When it's over, I will have to go check my flowers to see if they got beaten up too badly by this rain! Thank you Jesus for problems like this! Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life.