Streams of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise.

The Lord is my shepherd and nothing is wanting to me. In green pastures He hath settled me. Psalm 23:1

Come Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

There is absolutely not a whimper of complaint in my heart. Seriously folks. Perspective is everything and less than thirty miles from where I am sitting in front of a fan and sipping freshly roasted coffee, like yesterday freshly roasted, over a million souls have been displaced. 100% of my teachers are from Mosul, and as we walk through rebuilding not just destroyed homes, but destroyed hopes and dreams, no whimpering allowed about the irregular production of national electricity that simply cannot keep up with the shifting populations in spite of the billions of American dollars invested. Seems like it all might have gotten stuck in someone’s pockets along the way. So every street corner has their version of a diesel smoking coughing hacking generator that clicks on and off several or several dozen times a day.

And closely tied in with the electricity thing or lack thereof, is water. Not only is this beautiful country adrift in a veritable sea of blue and white plastic bottles of drinking water of all sizes and shapes and textures, but well, the plain old shower variety is a little unpredictable as well. Pretty much every morning between midnight and one I can hear our kindly neighbors rattling the pressurizer pipes in our front yard so our two rooftop tanks will fill up.

And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes that ol’ shower and dishwashing water is a little scarce until we hire a roaming truck to fill up the tanks. And thus my connection with this morning’s hymn. Tomorrow morning my students are going to practice writing engaging warm-ups that connect the new learning with student experiences or background knowledge.

So a few days ago I found myself up on the roof hefting heavy hoses with full fire engine force into the tanks when we hit overflow even though I had been enthusiastically shouting my nonKurdish Stop Stop down to the water tank guy.

And Founts of Blessing poured out of the overflow pipe. And I doused myself from head to toe in utter delight.

Under a hazy blanket of heat and confusion, He leads me by cool waters; He restoreth my soul.

Songs of Thanksgiving.