The Discipline of Responsive Stewardship

This week my wife and I saw the movie 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen', an improbable story that can still reel you in. It’s romantic comedy and political satire, not an environmental film, but one of the sub-plots contrasts a vision for developing a barren landscape against antagonists who would rather destroy the environment to advance their political ends. The downstream results are devastating (though, since the film is a comedy, not ultimately terminal).

That’s a light-hearted backdrop for the weighty and timely theme of ecological stewardship. In previous posts we’ve looked at two important disciplines for living joyfully and responsively in our flawed but wonderful world: the discipline of reverence, worship and awe and the discipline of gratitude. These disciplines focus our outlook and attitude towards creation and instill a sense of wonder and privilege. The discipline that I want to highlight in this post is

New Beginnings

After a four-week silence this blog is back – with a new name and a fresh focus. For the past 18 months I blogged about the Wonder of Water – 210 posts exploring references to water in the Bible and what they have to say to us about life today. You will soon be able to read many of these reflections – and more – in my new book Downstream from Eden.

In the last post I wrote before Christmas I used the phrase ‘downstream from eden’ to describe the less-than-ideal circumstances of our life journey in the real world. Yesterday was one of those, a milestone marker for me and my children.

In Praise of Amniotic Fluid

The amazing gift of water completely surrounds us long before we draw our first breath. And the wonder of it all dazzled me afresh each time I watched one of my children being born!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Psalm 139:13-15 NLT

When my wife was in labor with our first daughter, her nurse, who was also a friend and a seasoned midwife, whispered to her after several fruitless hours of labor, ‘I’m going to break your water, that will get things moving.’

The Scent of Water - Wells of Hope

In Job 14, the beleaguered wise man asks a lot of questions trying to solve the riddle of life and death.

Using a string of similes, Job ponders our human mortality – we’re like flowers that wither, fleeting shadows, day laborers (here today, gone tomorrow), lakes and rivers that evaporate, soil and stone eroded by running water.

But knotted into this string of death images is the intriguing thing called hope. Is it a mirage? Is it a false dream, a futile longing, that our lives have meaning and significance? Or does the world contain hints that point to a reality bigger than death?

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.

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.

Harvest Providence

This week-end is Canadian Thanksgiving. . .

And this word from Psalm 65 seems like the perfect 'water' text for the occasion

You care for the land

and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God

are filled with water to

provide the people with grain,

You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

Psalm 65:9-10

Presence

I think one of the most memorable lines in all of Isaiah’s inspiring 8th century prophecy is this –

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.
Isaiah 43:2.

These words occur in the part of Isaiah that describes Israel’s release from exile and return to their homeland, but they also convey God’s promise to sustain Israel through the ordeal of exile, which was truly a deep water trauma. It was an upheaval so jarring and disorienting, many Jews doubtless lost what little faith they had. It seemed obvious that God had abandoned them and broken covenant with them.

To Infinity and Beyond

Yesterday we had a brush with infinity. My wife and I were hiking along the Skógá River above Skogafoss, one of Iceland’s most striking waterfalls.

The falls are post-card perfect – an impressive 60 meter sheer drop (higher than Niagara) into a thundering pool (often with a double rainbow effect). The rugged rocks on either side and the jet-black sand on the flat plain along the river below the falls give a dramatic framing. No wonder legends of buried Viking gold grew up around this place; no wonder tourists shoot a zillion photos.

Climbing 380 steps to see the falls from above drew us into an adventure of discovery. A stile over a fence at the top beckoned us further up and further in. Little did we know the wonders that awaited.

As the Deer

Thirst is a powerful motivator.

Our bodies are 70% water, but since we’re always depleting our water supply to the functions of cooling, cleansing and even breathing, we can't go long without a drink. On average we need 2.5 litres a day - ten cups - usually more in the summer. It’s a compelling need.

When you’re healthy, your body regulates your fluid balance quite nicely. If you drink more water than you need, your kidneys dispose of the surplus. But if the fluid balance drops, your body sends signals. A 2% short-fall and you know you’re thirsty; a 5% deficit makes you confused and groggy; by 8% your muscles spasm, and 15% is pretty much fatal.

Water Cycle

Round and around it goes, steaming up as vapor and then falling as rain or snow. It’s the hydrologic cycle and it goes on endlessly day after day, night after night all over the world. A billion tons of water every minute - up and down. Every day about 12% of the vapor in the atmosphere falls to the earth and is replaced by a fresh supply.

And everywhere this enormous gift of rain or snowfall accomplishes a variety of essential services for our earth by cleansing the air, moderating the temperature and, most obviously, nourishing the plants and animals on the earth.

Getting Water from Rocks

Back in November I wrote come comments reflecting on the Exodus story -

Deserts are relentless – and humans are not well-adapted to desert demands.

As the Israeli tribes travelled deeper into the wilderness of Sinai toward their promised home, their principal need was water.

Once, in Exodus 17, when the need was especially acute, God told Moses to smack a nearby rock. To everyone’s astonishment, water gushed out. God knows the map-line of every underground aquifer and how to provide for his people.

Unruly Child

Imagine a womb large enough to hold the oceans of the world until it was time for them 'to burst forth from the womb'!  That is the bizarre but graphic image God uses in The Book of Job in speaking of the birth of creation.

Then, expanding on the birth metaphor, God describes wrapping the new-born Sea-child as a mother swaddles an infant: 'I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness.' 

Imagine thick ocean fog - Who can see through it? Who can see beyond the horizon or penetrate the silence of all that lies in the deep darkness of the sea? What a rich metaphor for the mystery of the oceans, their vast distances, beyond our sight and knowledge!

Birthing the Sea

In February 2009, 48 high school and university students aboard the 57 foot Nova Scotia ship the SV Concordia, were sailing in rough seas 500 kms off the coast of Brazil when a bizarre wind – a microburst - suddenly capsized their boat. Within 20 minutes it sank.

The students and 16 staff members all escaped safely to life-boats and were rescued the next day by commercial ships, but they will never forget the unpredictable, untamable power of the sea.

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.

Radical Equality

Here’s a wonder of water – sunrise and rainfall support democracy!

Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45

Jesus says that God is a large-hearted, even-handed Giver. He points out that God is generous to us regardless of our degree of virtue or vice. Sunshine and rain are gifts from the Creator to his creatures with no moral pre-conditions. Jesus echoed the Psalmist a thousand years earlier who said “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all that he has made.” Psalm 145:9.

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.

New World Comin'

A river runs through it – from start to finish, from the Garden of Eden to the last chapter of Revelation, the story of God and Earth is told as a river-story.

At one of the lowest points of the story, in exile far from their homeland, the prophet Ezekiel (Ch. 47) imagines a trickle of water bubbling out of the dry ground in Jerusalem. It flows from the temple of God across the desert hills to the Jordan valley and into the Dead Sea.

The further it flows, the deeper and wider the current grows and, astonishingly, the more lush the barren landscape becomes. Everything is refreshed and renewed. Fishing and agriculture burst into life. Trees flourish along the banks of the river. The Dead Sea becomes a fresh-water lake.