A Floating Ax-head

There’s a water story about Elisha that frankly stretches my credulity.

The school of prophets which Elisha led was clearing trees in the Jordan River valley to build a larger place to live. Suddenly someone’s ax-head flew off and fell into the river. What’s worse than losing your tools is losing a tool you borrowed from somebody else. So the poor man turned to the master and explained his plight.

“Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. 2 Kings 6:6

Desert, Torrent and Sea

Woven throughout the puzzling images of the Book of Revelation are the twin themes of victory and suffering.

Half-way through the book, in Chapter 12, John sees ‘a great and wondrous sign’ that illustrates this double truth.

A pregnant woman is on the verge of giving birth, but a fierce red dragon stands in front of her ready to pounce on her infant the moment she delivers. It’s a bizarre picture to be sure, but it's a symbolic portrait of the cosmic battle under-lying the history of the human race.

The woman is a composite of Eve, the mother of all living (who was stalked by the serpent) and Mary, the mother of Jesus, stalked by Herod after Jesus was born. The new-born boy-child, we’re told, “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” So we know this is about the reign of Jesus and the hostility of the evil one who seeks to destroy him. The child is no sooner born than he is “snatched up to God and to his throne” (v.5). The story leaps from the birth of Jesus to his ascension to heaven.

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.

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.

Flood Season

This week-end's news told of swollen rivers over-flowing their banks in the Assinoboine and Mississippi flood-plains and disastrous floods in Colombia. Today's post focuses on the challenge of a river in flood-stage.

In the spring of the year, the Jordan River runs at its highest level, swollen by melting snow and late winter rains. This was the season when God chose to lead Israel into the Promised Land, perhaps for two reasons. Pragmatically, it brought Israel into their new homeland in time for the abundance of the spring barley and wheat harvest. But more significantly, it provided a dramatic sign of God’s amazing power for both Israel and the nations.

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.

Thirsty in the Badlands

It was an ill-conceived military venture - Israel's kings marching out to exact revenge on their eastern neighbors, the Moabites, who had recently welched on their annual tribute obligations. This was economic thuggery, royal arrogance backed by military muscle and completely beyond the purposes of God. But this story in 2 Kings 3 showcases a God of grace who does far better for people than anyone deserves.

A seven-day roundabout march through the badlands south of the Dead Sea, left the kings and their armies stranded at the frontier of Moab, without water. In desperation they consulted the prophet Elisha for an oracle from God.

Leadership Springs

Time was of the essence. The senile King David shivered in the hours before his death, but his scheming son kept his eye focused on his father’s crown. Adonijah was handsome, shrewd and self-serving. Aware that the king favored Solomon as his heir, Adonijah moved quickly to grasp his advantage. (Read 1 Kings 1)

With a small bodyguard, he organized his own coronation. He invited all his royal brothers except Solomon to a lavish feast at the En-Rogel spring outside the southern walls of the city – a country barbeque – to celebrate his accession to the throne and, no doubt, to enlist their support.

But news of his conspiracy leaked out and the prophet Nathan roused the dying king to act. David immediately named Solomon his successor and ordered Nathan to convene the official coronation of Solomon at the other spring – Gihon, a few hundred meters north of En-Rogel.

Water Warehouse

The Genesis Creation story describes the artistry and power of God creating the world. It is effortless, effective and orderly. God speaks and things happen… Light, Sky, Ocean, Land, Grass,

But Psalm 33 depicts God working hard to organize nature.

Think of God as a warehouse manager . . .

"He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;

he puts the deep into storehouses.'

Psalm 33:7

It’s a picturesque metaphor - the vast inventory of the oceans collected and compressed into barrels or skins, stacked up and stored in place so that human life can prevail on the earth.  Vivid language to express the majesty of Yahweh’s governance over the world with purpose.

If it weren't for the Sky . . .

Day two and three of the Great Creation Story witness two stunning wonder-of-water events – the emergence of the atmosphere and the separation of dry land from surrounding oceans.

Two crucial environmental events that define the Earth as we know it! Today we’ll consider the first – and in the next post, the second.

The troposphere – what we commonly call Sky, but including the air around us – is a fragile and invisible membrane between us and the cold dark. A mere 15 kilometers of space between sea-level and the highest clouds holds most of our air. It’s where most of our weather happens.

Even the 50 kilometers out to the ozone layer is proportionately thinner than the skin of an apple, but it is a complex and highly functional domain.

Testing and Resting

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, 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. That happened more than once as God proved his faithfulness to his people.  Israel immortalized God's power in poetry and song:

He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas;
He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.
Psalm 78:15-16

But song alone can’t change character and Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test, complaining constantly, testing God’s patience, quarreling with God. Moses even named a couple of memorable landmarks Massah (i.e. Testing) and Meribah (i.e. Quarreling) to mark these low-points in their spiritual odyssey.

Let Justice Flow Like Rivers

 Where the river flows, life abounds. Ezekiel 47:9  The Message

Satellite images illustrate the vital importance of water in the Egyptian desert. From ancient times the civilizations of Egypt have depended on the Nile River for its agriculture and commerce.

So vital was the water that ancient Egyptians deified the river. They called the Nile-god 'Hapi'. Every year in late summer, Hapi’s breasts over-flowed with the surplus of the rains in the highlands to south. Hapi made Egypt wealthy and the affluent enjoyed security and sophistication. The gods seemed to smile on Egypt.

Israel saw the world differently.

Fresh Rain

It’s every teacher’s dream . . .  her students soaking up inspired teaching like thirsty grass.

Parents and poets and preachers have the same hope and dream. Nothing sweeter than hungry minds feasting on your words - that’s why we talk and write.


Moses was a teacher. He spent a lifetime walking with God – decades beyond his burning bush experience – not just talking his faith, but living it, modeling it in the rough and tumble of unfolding history. Now as a farewell gift to his people he wrote a song - Deuteronomy 32 - about the timeless ways and love of God.

All that the Rain Brings

I will send rain on your land in its season,

both autumn and spring rains,

Deuteronomy 11:14

At the Canadian Clay and Glass Museum in Waterloo, Ontario I saw a sculpture titled All That the Rain Brings by British Columbia ceramic artist Mary Fox.

Let me try to describe it and interpret what it seems to me the title and the sculpture suggest about rain.

All That The Rain Brings
Sculptor Mary Fox
Photographer: Janet Dwyer

The uppermost of three small bowls is tilted down-wards. Rain is sheer gift. It comes from above and what it brings is life-giving. It supports us biologically as surely as the wavy ceramic column supports the bowl physically and artistically.

The downward flow of the three bowls follows the flow of rain from cloud to earth and streams and back to the sea. The three bowls suggest multiple ways that rain sustains our lives physically, economically, spiritually.  We use water for drinking, washing, cooking, agriculture, industry and recreation.

The bowls are positioned erratically suggesting that the rain is not a neat and tidy process. We can’t control when the rains come – they may be late or early - doesn't rain often seem inconvenient? -  sometimes the rain is too much or too little. None of the bowls is level as if to remind us that we can’t hold on to water.

This sculpture looks to me like a haggard old woman – and perhaps that’s what we are as we wait for rain. We do our best to catch it and keep it, and we manage it as we can, but at best we’re at the mercy of the elements. We are receptors of nature’s bounty.

And maybe that’s part of what rain brings us – an extravagant gift, a humble reminder of our identity and lessons in patience, humility, gratitude and . . . wonder! As dramatically as rain brings the dry land back to life, so this gift - wonderful in every way - renews hope and energizes life. I'm pretty glad about that.

Generous Source of all that the rain brings,

how gladly we welcome your gift of rain. 

How vital it is -- and yet how anonymous You are.

Teach us your name, your largesse, your modesty.

Help us learn to tilt our bowls to others

as freely as You have tilted yours towards us. Amen

If interested, you can see more work by Mary Fox at the Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, Ontario - http://www.jonathons.ca/

Dew of Heaven

Moses stood on the verge of the Promised Land and prayed for God’s blessing on the twelve tribes. For Joseph's tribes Moses prayed,

"May the LORD bless his land with the precious dew from heaven above and with the deep waters that lie below; … with the best gifts of the earth and its fullness and the favor of him who dwelt in the burning bush.
Deuteronomy 33:13-16

A prayer for ‘precious dew’ would mean a lot to people who have lived in the dry desert for 40 years. Add ‘the deep waters that lie below’, the unseen wealth of aquifers, and you have the conditions for bountiful agricultural prosperity.

Moses believed that God is not stingy, that God would prosper Joseph’s tribes lavishly. Abundance, not scarcity is God’s signature, though with an invisible anonymous hand.

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/