Eastern Hospitality

Centuries before the magi visited Bethlehem bringing exquisite gifts fit for a king, a desert sheik spotted three strangers lingering a short distance from his tents. With the vigor characteristic of middle-eastern hospitality, he hurried over to them and offered them a quick drink of water.

In the conventions of hospitality, you make the initial offer so small that to refuse would be an insult. Then,

To Serve and Protect

In the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2:5-15, Adam’s priestly task also included a protective role. He was to ‘tend’ the garden and to ‘watch over’ it. Other translations say to ‘keep’ it or ‘take care of’ it.

The Hebrew word for ‘keep’, samar, is a military term. It is exactly the same word used in the next chapter when the angel with a flaming sword ‘guards’ the way to the tree of life against intruders. It is used again in the fourth chapter in Cain’s retort, “Am I my brother’s keeper?

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.

Terra Firma

The famous Tower of Pisa began sinking by the time the second floor was being built. The cause – a weak foundation and unstable subsoil.

By contrast, the Golden Gate Bridge withstands enormous tides and currents and survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake unscathed in part because it sits on solid foundations, at one end on a bedrock ledge and at the other on a massive pier the size of a football field.

Noah Part 1 - Flood Story / Love Story

Many cultures of the world have stories of mythic proportions about a flood that virtually annihilates human civilization. Cultures as far apart as Scandinavians and Polynesians, Australian aboriginals and American Navajo, Celts, Mayans and Thai all tell a story of a great inundation.

The story of Noah is quite literally a watershed event in the Biblical narrative. (Genesis 6-9)  It is catastrophic - human and animal populations are all but destroyed. It is like a reversal of creation – the unmaking of earth. How are we to understand this devastating over-whelming of the earth?

Nile Nightmare

The nightmare jolted him awake. Pharaoh stood beside his beloved Nile as seven fat cows climbed out of the river and begin grazing along the bank. All was well until, ominously, seven scrawny cows came out of the same river, stalked the healthy cows and devoured them.

Cannibal cows! – a bad portent – something nasty was afoot on the banks of the sacred Nile.  Pharaoh woke with a start.

Jacob's Second Kiss

Josef von Führich,  Jacob Encountering Rachel, 1836

It is only the second kiss mentioned in the Bible – and it happened beside a village well.

No doubt Rebekah told her son Jacob, how as a young woman she had watered a stranger’s camels and gained a husband for her initiative (see previous posts). Now, twenty years later, Jacob himself stood by that same well.

The most breath-taking girl he had ever seen was leading her flock to water. Some dim-witted shepherds were loitering, waiting for help to move the large stone well-cover so they could water their herds (and perhaps ogle or flirt with the girl). Jacob, a master of spontaneity, single-handedly hefted the massive stone away from the well-mouth and drew water for the woman and her sheep.

Rehoboth - space to be neighbors

As his herds increased, so did Isaac’s need for water. And when his crops flourished, the jealousy of his neighbors over-flowed. They fouled his wells with rocks and dirt and eventually evicted him from the region.

In a day when revenge and dominance was a sign of strength lest your opponents sensed fear and weakness. Isaac showed remarkable restraint. He intuitively knew the proverb that a soft answer can turn aside wrath.

Spring in the Gerar Valley today

Isaac left his crops and moved his herds elsewhere – to the Gerar valley where his father had dug wells and pastured flocks decades earlier. Local herdsmen had filled them in after the old man died, but Isaac re-excavated them and continued the family cattle business.

Prosperity makes enemies as well as friends - and the local herdsmen harassed the wealthy newcomer. When Isaac dug a new well, his neighbors claimed prior right to the resource. Isaac named the well “Argument” and walked away from it. They contested the next well, so Isaac named it “The Well of Anger” and abandoned it too.

Patiently Isaac outlasted his adversaries. He dug a third well over which no one fought. He named it "Rehoboth" – Wide-Open Spaces – in gratitude for the elbow-room it gave him and the opportunity to live peaceably among strangers – and to flourish together, sharing the natural resources.

River of Delights

The name Eden means delight – and what is more delightful than the silver glint of a river coursing through a lush green garden?

The Creation story in Genesis Chapter 2 describes such a river flowing through God’s 'Garden of Delights', a landscape of sheer perfection – visually beautiful, functional and richly instructive. Genesis tells us that Nature is not primary. God is. The garden and river come from a landscape artist who loves life, beauty, form, function, and, quite obviously, the people for whom the garden was designed.

Imagine this - God designed us all to live in Eden, and for Eden to live in us, with a river – God’s living spirit - flowing through us, a stream of joy and purpose, of love and creativity, a stream that keeps us alive-to-God and to the world around us.