Water on Thirsty Ground

In the summer of 2012 ninety percent of USA counties declared a state of emergency due to drought conditions. Corn crops shriveled and grain prices soared. 2013 doesn't look any more promising - at least in the West with low winter snowfall in the Rockies and projections that river-flows across the western states will be below average in 2013, as they have been for ten of the last 13 years.

Some ecologists today feel it is too late to talk about ‘sustainable’ strategies and focus instead on being ‘resilient’ as the earth's environment moves into deepening crisis.

Chronic drought can be debilitating, not just on the landscape, but in every area of life. Drought comes in many forms – when inspiration fails, when customers, job prospects or funding sources dry up … when marriage turns sour or brittle, or a daughter no longer calls home. Droughts like these cry out for relief just as desperately as farmers scan the sky for signs of rain.

That’s where some lines from the prophet Isaiah sing out to us with glistening hope:

I will pour water out on the thirsty land.
I will make streams flow on the dry ground.
I will pour out my Spirit on your children.
I will pour out my blessing on their children after them.
They will spring up like grass in a meadow.
They will grow like poplar trees near flowing streams.
Isaiah 44:3-4

Isaiah’s words came to the Jewish exiles in ancient Babylon as they wilted in ghetto communities and labor camps along the Euphrates. They were surrounded by physical water, but their souls were dry, their faith was parched, the future looked barren. Their children felt rootless with fading interest in the old traditions, culture and faith.

A 2012 study of church drop-out rates among young adults in Canada called Hemorrhaging Faith paints a similarly bleak picture. The landscape looks dry and unpromising and the status quo is surely unsustainable.

But barren landscapes don't tell the whole story. Isaiah invites us to embrace his song about rain and renewal, about God’s life-giving Spirit breaking into a new generation, about grass springing up in parched woodlots and poplars lining the riverbank – pictures of growth, vitality and a promising future.

This song – God’s song – counters the fear of the exiles – and the fears that paralyze us today. And parents, pastors and youth workers around the world can hear this song between the lines of Hemorrhaging Faith.

The larger context of Isaiah's song is about God as Creator and Redeemer, a God who calls us by name, who exposes the pipe-dream vanities, the contradictions and chaos that undermine our lives, a God who invites us instead into relationship and partnership in his mission to transform the dry and thirsty world.

That's a powerful song for today - the first day of Spring 2013. And Friday is World Water Day.  Until then, sing!

Image Credits:
Drought Map - Circle of Blue
Fresh Grass - Vanashree
Hemorrhaging Faith - James Penner & Asociates

At the Scent of Water

One of the signs of global climate change is that many places in the world are becoming drier by the year, though not always a result of decisions as reckless as the Aral Sea (see last week's post). Climate change is taking its toll and desertification is encroaching on many communities around the world.

It’s not just happening in Africa, Australia and California. Climatologists and meteorologists in central Europe have said that the region is seeing more and more extreme weather including long periods of dry and hot weather in the summer, severe flooding and bitter winter weather.

The Aral Sea Disaster

The Aral Sea stands as one of the monstrous environmental catastrophes of the 20th Century.

Before 1960, it was the world's fourth largest inland sea – behind Asia’s Caspian Sea, North America’s Lake Superior and Africa’s Lake Victoria – with an area of 68,000 km². It had a vibrant fishing industry employing 40,000 people. Today discarded fishing boats lie on the sand 20 kilometers from shore.

In the 1950’s and 60’s Soviet engineers began diverting its two major inflowing rivers to irrigate cotton fields. As a result Uzbekistan has become one of the world’s major cotton producers. But this drawdown had a disastrous result as the sea lost most of the inflow of its source waters. The mighty Aral Sea began shrinking – and shrank steadily until, in 2004 it was only 25% of its original surface area, and by 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size.

Contentment

It can probably be argued that the wealthy King Solomon was a victim of his own success. His capacity to produce fed an almost bottomless craving for more. But at least he had the insight to recognize the power of greed. His collections of proverbs includes this gem:

"There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, 'Enough!':
the grave, the barren womb,
land which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, 'Enough!'
Proverbs 30:15-16

Think about these four places in Nature where demand is fierce and insistent with an insatiable craving for more:

Drinking It In

Thanksgiving Gratitude Edition

Guest Writer - Kathy Legg

Land that drinks in rain often falling on it and produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. Hebrews 6:7

I live in a semi-arid zone, where rain does not often fall. And when it does the hard dry clay soil may not be well able to drink it in! It pools and puddles on the surface, or runs off in rivulets.

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

The Sound of Silence

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
Amos 8:11

Amos had grown hoarse pleading with the wealthy farmers in the north of Israel to see that their religious faith had to translate into compassion and fair dealings with the poor – or it was completely fraudulent. He warned them that if they wouldn’t listen to God’s words, God would give them the silent treatment. And that silence would not remain golden for very long. People cannot live without spiritual resources, without answers for the questions of life. Their fears mount and they search desperately for direction.

Desperate Drought

The drought in Jeremiah’s day was fierce. Rich and poor were equally frantic trying to fill empty water-jars. Cisterns were bone-dry; farmers were helpless and dismayed; the ground cracked under the heat of the sun and the next generation of wild-life hung in the balance.

Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn

because there is no grass.

Wild donkeys stand on the barren heights and

 pant like jackals. Jeremiah 14:5 

Drought is a terrible thing and Jeremiah pleads with God - “do something – for God’s sake Jeremiah 14:7.”

Downpour

Three years with no rain had left the land depleted and dry.

The showdown on Mount Carmel between Yahweh and Baal had confirmed which god deserved worship.  "Yahweh is God," the people had chorused.  But Yahweh's purpose was not self-aggrandisement or public acclaim.  Yahweh was - and is - intensely passionate about people and their well-being. He cared too much for the land and its people to leave the soil dusty and dead.  Rain was desperately needed - and that was to be the next demonstration of the character of the true Rain-maker God.  Read the story in 1 Kings 18:41-46 

Showdown

The drought grew more intolerable by the day. Streams ran dry; crops failed. The king was frantic for grazing land for his herds while peasants ached with hunger. Disaster stalked the land. Something had to break.

In the third year of the drought, 1 Kings 18, Elijah went to confront King Ahab. When they met, Ahab cursed Elijah - 'you trouble-maker' he sneered. ‘On the contrary’, Elijah countered, "you and your family are Israel's trouble-makers by abandoning the Lord's commands and following the Baals" (I Kings 18:17-18). Elijah called for a spiritual show-down on Mount Carmel, a sort of religious duel between Yahweh and Baal.

Elijah's Dew-Free Zone

It had been a grim three years in Israel’s northern region. Ahab was one of the bad kings. In fact, it was said that he ‘did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him’ 2 Kings 16:32-33.

One of his vices was his foreign wife Jezebel who had a special fondness for the sexually explicit Baal cult. ‘Human orgies lead to fertile fields’, she told them, and far and wide, Ahab’s people gave it a try. Her influence was pervasive; Asherah poles, Baal idols and hundreds of Baal priests filled the land.

So God sent the prophet Elijah with a message to Ahab. "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word" 1 Kings 17:1.

This was not good news. In northern Israel rain is usually plentiful and agriculture flourishes. No rain or dew was a death sentence for thousands of people. It was a serious ultimatum - abandon Baal worship or face the consequences.

Learning to Trust - or Distrust God

At the end of forty years, God told Moses that the years of Israel’s deprivation in the desert had had a purpose. 'My design', God said, was ‘to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart” Deuteronomy 8:2. 'As a father disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you’ (v.5) ‘to do you good in the end’ (v.16).

Hunger and thirst are powerful tests – and God wanted Israel to internalize deep in their consciousness a conviction that they could trust their covenant Partner. Experiencing God’s provision of water and food in God's time would lay a foundation of trust in other areas of life. But Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test. They were habitual whiners, constantly grumbling against God, testing God’s patience.

Rizpah and the Rain

Suffering sometimes triggers good soul-searching. And a three-year drought set King David on a desperate search for answers.

What he uncovered was a story of treachery and genocide that hadn’t registered a flicker on the national conscience.
See 2 Samuel 21:1-14.

It involved one of Israel’s tribal neighbors, the Gibeonites, who lived east of the Jordan. By ancient treaty, (see Joshua 9) these people had enjoyed protection and immunity from attack by Israel. But David’s predecessor, Saul broke faith and attempted to annihilate them – and almost succeeded.

World Wetlands Day

I used to think that February 2 was simply Groundhog Day.

But apparently it’s also World Wetlands Day – a day to celebrate and appreciate the rich bio-diversity and economic benefits of an under-appreciated wonder of water. Forty years ago on this date, the world signed the Ramsar Convention to protect the world’s wetlands.

I had never heard about Ramsar until this year. I used to think of wetlands simply as wastelands – ugly, mosquito-breeding eyesores on the landscape. I considered them like the Dead Marshes near Mordor in Lord of the Rings whose mists and vapors gave off a terrible stench.

Actually, wet-lands serve us very well. Mud-flats and mangrove swamps buffer the coastline and reduce erosion. Swamps, bogs, marshes and fens are huge sponges that absorb flood-water, filter out pollutants and hold them in the soil, improving water quality. They filter rainwater run-off, minimizing the silting of rivers and streams.

Rain, Rain, Rain

The annual migration of Serengeti wild-life is a desperate drama -- two million desperately thirsty animals traveling hundreds of miles in search of the life-giving rains. Without the rains, they die.

We all do.

Ancient Israel's Earth-maker hymn, Psalm 104, celebrates Rain as a sign of God’s generous providence. And as Jesus noted, rain does not discriminate; it falls on "the just and the unjust alike"!


He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
Psalm 104:13

Rain photo from 'The Water Cooler' blog
http://www.centralbasin.org/blog/category/drought/