From "The Horse and His Boy"

In honor of C.S. Lewis who died forty-eight years ago today, November 22, 1963,  . . . here are a couple of water references from The Chronicles of Narnia.

In The Horse and His Boy, Shasta is travelling across a desert at night. He is thirsty, hungry, tired and lost. . . and feeling very sorry for himself. Suddenly he discovers that someone or something is walking beside him. In his fear he tries to ignore it, but finally whispers, “Who are you?” The unwelcome fellow traveler replies, “One who has waited long for you to speak.”

A Large Family Circle

In the previous two posts Fertile Crescent and Beer-sheva, we have followed the journey of Abraham from the rich waters of Mesopotamia to the arid land of the Negev where Abraham settled in response to the call of God. He named his settlement Beer-sheva, ‘the well of the oath’ to commemorate both his treaty with the resident king who recognized Abraham’s legitimacy and his ownership of a contested well that Abraham’s servants had dug.

Gerar Valley

It turns out this was not the only well Abraham dug to sustain his herds and flocks. A generation later when Abraham’s son Isaac settled in the Gerar Valley, 15 miles west of Beer-sheva (about 10 miles east from modern day Gaza) the locals harassed him by plugging all his wells with dirt and debris, ‘wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham,’ Genesis 26:15.

Wells and cisterns were crucial in the Negev for economic survival, and clearly Abraham had invested considerable effort to acquire them as means for prosperity. Wells were an important

Fertile Crescent

The journey of Abraham and four generations of his descendents follows the arc of the Fertile Crescent from the famed Tigris-Euphrates valley in the east, or Mesopotamia as it was known, to the Nile Delta in the west.

Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, was the cradle of one of the earliest civilizations on earth. It already had two thousand years of commerce, culture and tradition when Abraham was born in Ur on the south bank of the Euphrates. Lying just west of the point where the two mighty rivers joined before flowing into the Persian Gulf, Ur was a prosperous and proud culture, living off the largess of the two rivers.

Mesopotamia was water-rich. The Tigris rises in the Taurus Mountains 1,000 miles to the northwest. Less than a hundred miles away, the Euphrates flows first westerly then it curls around to the southeast and flows in a roughly parallel direction to the Tigris, draining a vast region of hills in their early miles and then meandering a thousand kilometers across the plains. Early settlers in Mesopotamia developed extensive irrigation systems and levees to enhance the use of water for agriculture. Traders brought goods and wealth from far afield and the commercial expertise of the Mesopotamians fostered the development of cuneiform script, the earliest known system of writing.

The name Euphrates derives from the Persian word for 'the good', but the Bible is not particularly impressed with the good life in Ur or the whole Mesopotamian culture. Instead, it tells the story of a man and his descendents who deliberately the cultural and economic amenities of Ur and travelled west in search of a very different kind of civilization.

As Thomas Cahill tells it in The Gifts of the Jews, it would have seemed to everyone in Ur that this was a migration in the wrong direction. But in fact this peculiar migration became 'a hinge of history changing the way everyone in the world today thinks and feels.'

Genesis 12 tells of the summons of a god named Yahweh who said to Abram “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go (or come) to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.”

So Abraham left this land of abundance and travelled to a place where water was much less available. In the course of this adventure he would learn that God, the designer of rivers, is also the spring of a different kind of water, living water and the headwaters of every stream that enriches our lives.  Nevertheless, Abraham also had to work hard to support his herds and flocks in a land of minimal rain or surface water.

Image Sources:
Map: Ancient History Encyclopedia 
Euphrates: Ferrell Jenkins
Book: Amazon.com

Song for Africa's Newest Nation

Tomorrow Africa’s newest nation will be born.

During my visit to South Sudan in 2008 I saw the ruins of schools and churches destroyed thirty years ago at the hands of their own government. I met young people born in refugee camps and listened as grand-parents spoke of their dreams of a re-building their nation.

Now thanks to international efforts, and a referendum in support of independence they have a fresh opportunity for peace and growth.

They need our prayers.

Coming Clean - Starting Over

Things weren't going well for Israel. Politically they were fragmented, they ware militarily impotent and economically depressed. For decades they had experimented with local religious practices and were mired in idolatry. Somehow they were now at a breaking point - and breaking points can become turning points.

The Rock that Followed Them

The Exodus narrative relates four or five wonderful occasions when God supplied water for the multitudes of Israel and their flocks as they traversed the wilderness of Sinai: Marah, Elim, Massah , Meribah and Be'er. Beyond these few references the Bible tells us virtually nothing about how God provided Israel’s water needs - which leaves us with a big question.

There were oases here and there, but how could they have survived a generation in that forbidding terrain without water?

Deuteronomy 8:14-15 summarizes the miraculous odyssey this way: 'the LORD your God, … led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock'.

Thirst-Quencher

It is one of the high-water marks of the Bible’s entire witness to water and the grace of God. It happened during the annual Jewish Festival of Tabernacles.

This late-summer festival looked back in history to Israel's exodus and God’s provision of water in the desert, and it looked ahead to the dream of Israel’s restored honor among the nations as predicted in Zechariah 14:16. Every year pilgrims came to Jerusalem from every direction in what Josephus called as “a most holy and most eminent feast.”
- Antiquities of the Jews, VIII, iv, 1.

* * * Feast of Tabernacles painting - Valerie R Jackson

Swimming Home

Last week I wrote about Ezekiel’s vision of a New World Comin’. Today my sister, Kathy Legg who lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, writes about her thoughts of that extraordinary vision in Ezekiel 47.

Picture this: You’re in a foreign land, a lush and lovely place, prosperous, sophisticated. But it’s not your true home, and to the locals you’re an anomaly, subject to ridicule. You believe in an unseen God. You long to worship openly without the risk you’ll antagonize someone. You try to fit in but it leaves you feeling soul-weary and fragmented. You want to go home. But you can’t -- you’re captive here. Will you ever see home again?

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.

Ashes of Death - Water of Life

Today is Ash Wednesday.

Ashes and water combined to form a sacred part of ancient Israel’s purity code.

Not just any water – it had to be fresh spring-water, literally living water. And not just ashes from any old fire, but the ashes of a special sacrifice.

The animal had to be a red heifer, free of blemishes, one that had never calved and been put under the yoke! . . .

God, We're Thirsty

The worst times can inspire the most passionate songs:

O God, you are my God,
Earnestly I seek you;
My soul thirsts for you,
My body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1

King David was fleeing for his life. His son Absalom had staged a revolt, overthrown the crown and was consolidating his power in Jerusalem. David fled the city with a small band of supporters and headed east across the 20 km stretch of hills towards the Jordan.

The Great Bethlehem Water Caper

Water from your hometown well is always the sweetest - especially when you’re far from home!

Biyar Daoud - King David Wells, Bethlehem

David was a king-in-waiting – in hiding, actually, with a band of desperado friends. His home-town of Bethlehem had recently fallen into Philistine hands and David began to crave the best water in the world.

"Would I ever like a drink of water from the well at the gate of Bethlehem!” he sighed.

His daring friends secretly accepted the challenge, broke through enemy lines, secured a skein of water and carried it back to David - an exploit full of bravado and esteem for their good friend and leader. No doubt they told in vivid detail how they had pulled off the caper under the noses of the sleeping Philistines.

But for David, the hazards his comrades had faced to get this water for him, made the water sacred. It was no longer a consumable commodity. Drinking it would have reduced it to mere water, when it represented his friends life-blood. Only God was worthy of such a sacrifice. So instead of drinking the water, David poured it out reverently before the Lord.

It’s a timeless tale of friendship and heroic action and it shows how the most common thing like water can have meaning far deeper than the thing itself.

In Honor of C.S. Lewis . . .

. . . who died on this date, 47 years ago, November 22, 1963, a week before his 65th birthday.

"Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.

Love. Think. Speak.

Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

The Magician’s Nephew, p. 108

There are lots of wonderful water scenes in the Narnia Chronicles, but one of my favorites is the story of Jill in The Silver Chair.  Jill is desperately thirsty and hears running water nearby. She ventures into a forest in search of the stream and when she sees it, she is afraid to approach the stream because a huge lion is sitting between her and the stream.

'Are you not thirsty?’ asked the Lion.
‘I’m dying of thirst,’ said Jill.
‘Then drink,’ said the Lion.

Water Into Fine Wine

I spent the week-end cleaning old wine bottles in preparation for filling them this week.

Water is a great cleaning agent, but it has even nobler roles in the world of wine.

For Better or Worse . . .
It was a wedding host’s worst nightmare - and a bad omen for the marriage. At mid-point in the reception, the wine ran out. The celebration sagged and the guests would soon start leaving. It smacked of bad planning, embarrassing poverty or, worse, shabby hospitality.

Enter the mystery guest. Without fanfare, almost before anyone knew what had happened, Jesus replenished the depleted store of wine, and the party continued.


Wells of Joy - Part One

After a seven-year search, the Jewish settlers at the fledgling Kibbutz Na’an finally found water. Their joy was ecstatic; their future secured.




A dancer in the kibbutz named Else Dublin choreographed a simple dance to celebrate the event. And today, 72 years later, it is one of the most popular Israeli folk dances.

Mayim, Mayim! (Water, Water!) is a circle dance, so it is easy to imagine dancing around a well. The words of the song come directly from Isaiah 12.

‘Water, water, water.
With joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation!’

Even though Kibbutz Na’an is proudly unreligious, the words of Isaiah seemed the perfect expression of their joy.

Thirsty No More

Guest contributor - Grace Jacobson


Sometimes you meet the strangest people at the water-cooler.

I’d never seen him before. We could have been any two thirsty people coming for a drink. How could he have known that behind my mask I was forever searching for love in all the wrong places?

Five times my dowry returned, I’d forgotten who I really am. I’d giving up the formalities and even worse, the hope of every finding my true love – or my true self. I came at noon to avoid the whispers of the gossips.

I could see right away that he was a Jew and I braced for the sting of his slur. But he merely asked for a drink. “What, no racist epithet?” I asked.

But he simply said that God is generous and if I knew who was talking to me and asked him for a drink, he’d be more than willing to give me a drink. I stared at him.