A Garden Fountain

In recent posts we’ve been considering the significance of the Garden of Eden for human vocation and environmental stewardship.

Eden is also the Bible's original setting where a man and woman first set eyes on each other. So it is entirely fitting that the Song of Songs, which is full of extravagant poetic description, uses garden and water imagery to depict the intimacy and vibrancy of marital love.

Dear lover and friend,
you're a secret garden,
a private and pure fountain.
Body and soul, you are paradise, . . .
A garden fountain, sparkling and splashing,
fed by spring waters from the Lebanon mountains.
Song of Songs 4:12-15 MSG


In the exotic language of this song, this is an extended metaphor of sexual intimacy.

Partnering with the Creator

The Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2:5-15 illustrates how we human beings were created to serve our Creator as partners-in residence.

The narrator notes two critical agents necessary for sustaining a fruitful landscape – the human and the divine, the gift of rain and the effort of grounds-keepers. Ecology is a partnership in which the Creator initiates and the human creature responds and both depend on the other. The Creator won’t initiate the process until his partner is ready.

Garden of Eden - Vocation

Before the Garden of Eden was planted, the Book of Genesis describes the world as barren and uncultivated: “neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land." Genesis 2:5-6 NLT

Great potential was going to waste. Parts of the earth were dry from lack of rain and other parts were drenched by the inundation of streams, but neither had yet been cultivated because there was no one to harness the waters and apply them to any useful agriculture.

A Well-Watered Garden

It frustrated God like crazy.  Folks were praying and practicing their rituals religiously but under the surface they had no heart for what really mattered to God.  God lamented their superficiality -

Day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
They seem eager for God to come near them -
or as The Message says,
'they love having me on their side.'  Isaiah 58:2

But their hearts were as dry as dust.  Their Sabbath practice was actually mal-practice, observing their fasts but living by their fists; they appeared humble on the outside, but inwardly they were proud, self-serving and exploitive. (v. 3) And God had had enough of it.

Isaiah sketched out for them what a God-honoring faith might look like,

World Water Day - Imagine This!

Tomorrow, March 22, is the UN's annual World Water Day. This year's theme is "Water for Cities". 1000 delegates from 66 countries are gathered at a UN conference in Cape Town to address issues related to water, poverty, politics and urban issues.

The Bible describes a magnificent urban river scene in the last chapter of Revelation – a dazzling river with crystal clear water flowing down the middle of a great avenue.

The river flows from the throne of God which tells us that God loves this city* and sustains it as a place of refuge* and safety and where its citizens are being spiritually renewed* and nourished. Jesus is the spring of living water for the thirst and cleansing of the world.

Abundant Life

The Jordan is a small river.
But in ancient times it made a huge difference to an arid land: a steady supply of water, shade trees and verdant pasture land.

Five cities grew affluent across its plain. It was lush ‘like God’s garden' - the Garden of Eden.

This is a story about faith and economics; about natural resources and life choices.

Abraham’s young nephew Lot had an eye for agricultural potential and opportunity – and the Jordan plain caught his attention.