All Streams Flow to the Sea

Qoheleth, the world-weary narrator of Ecclesiastes, often thought to be the voice of Solomon, Israel’s sage king, looked on the phenomenon of rivers flowing to the sea and saw in them evidence of the tedium and futility of life.

All streams flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

there they return again.

All things are wearisome,

more than one can say.

Ecclesiastes 1:7-8

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.

CSI - Ancient Israel Water Ritual

What should you do if a dead body is found in a field, and your basic detective work cannot discover a killer? Here is an ancient water ritual that ensured that cold cases didn’t just suffer the indignity of civil neglect.

You can read the extended ritual in Deuteronomy 21:1-9. Here is a brief summary:

The Paradox of Rivers

"All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full!"  Ecclesiastes 1:7

Isn’t that an amazing thought? We could stand in awe at the mouth of Amazon, the Yangtze, the Danube and Brahmaputra, the Mississippi, Thames and Congo, the Mekong, Volga and Rhine, the Columbia and a thousand other rivers, large and small, pouring themselves day and night into the sea, and marvel at the paradox of the sea never getting filled to capacity.

It’s fascinating how this world seems to be a perpetual motion machine.

River Director

In many parts of the world, small farmers irrigate their fields or rice paddies by means of small channels which divert water from a reservoir or stream, a pond or well. The farmer opens or shuts sluice gates to direct water where he or she wants it to go. In larger operations, a variety of irrigation systems are used to ensure that the crops that need water, get it when they need it. Farmers meddle with nature to boost the productivity of their fields. A Hebrew proverb draws a parallel between this agricultural practice and the influence of God on the practices of earthly rulers.

The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD;

he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

Proverbs 21:1

Geo-Thermal Springs

Among the many wonders of Icelandic waters I experienced the past ten days – glaciers, geysers, waterfalls, rivers and ocean, the one that caught me most by surprise was the geo-thermal springs.

It is a strange sight to behold. Hiking in the hills and seeing steam rising from a hole in the ground. A pungent sulphurous odor pours out with the steam. A few meters away, another steam vent, and on up the mountain, pools of bubbling boiling water or mud – and three kilometers further up the chilly valley between mountains, the reward of a hot-water river with pools that invite leisurely bathing.

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.

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?

Rooted by the River-bank

I’ve always been impressed by the rugged roots of cedars growing along shale ravines.  Those roots worry their way down through fissures in the rock searching out the waters below. 

I love walking along woodland streams where gurgling waters keep plants alive and healthy despite the constant shade of the over-hanging tree cover.

Flowing streams provide continuous moisture and nutrients for the plants and animals that live along their banks. 

The Invisible but Vital Resource

A recent report by the C.D. Howe Institute on protecting Canada’s groundwater reserves calls them ‘the invisible but vital resource’. That phrase perfectly describes the theme of today’s Wonder of Water post about a fiery Spanish nun.

In her early years as a nun Theresa of Avila (1515-1585) was bored with prayer and luke-warm towards God. Yet she longed to be spiritually alive and to know God in the core of her soul - and eventually came to a place of passionate love for God.

In her autobiography, The Book of My Life, she tells how she grew in her experience of prayer, how God’s love became for her ‘an invisible but vital resource’. Using the imagery of water, she illustrates four stages of this journey.

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.

No Shortage of Water

Moses sounds like a travel agent. . . After leading his people across the desert to the threshold of the Promised Land, he gives them a glowing description of the land before them.

The LORD is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. Deuteronomy 8:7

It is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it. Deuteronomy 11:11-12

After forty years in the dry desert this sounded like paradise - rain-water, ground-water and surface water in abundance, streams and pools and springs - a farmer’s paradise for sure - and a hydro-geologist’s dream.

Let Justice Roll Down

In Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963, he quoted the Hebrew prophet Amos when he said “we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Amos and MLK both lived in prosperous nations who were proud of their religious heritage. Both were appalled at how religion so often masked hearts of greed and hostility.

Amos roars out God’s disgust over religious piety:
I hate, I despise your religious feasts
Away with the noise of your songs.
Amos 5:22 NIV
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
Amos 5:24 The Message

Amos believed that justice was the life-blood of society as water is life for the land.

Journey of the Magi

Whether you’re traveling this Christmas or staying home, I wish you the joy and wonder of
“a running stream and a water-mill.”

Let me explain. In his poem “The Journey of the Magi” T. S. Eliot describes the difficult journey of the Magi across the deserts of Arabia on their way to Bethlehem:
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year . . .
The very dead of winter."

The camels were uncooperative, he says, lying down in the melting snow, the night-fires continually going out, the towns unfriendly and dirty, charging high prices, and always the voices of derision, mocking their journey. Until . . .

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.

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.

Serenity

"You have made us for yourself

and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

Augustine, 398 CE



Photo "The Shepard" by  Floriana Barbu

The shepherd-poet David describes this God-given rest from anxiety and fear through the metaphor of a sheep quietly grazing under the watchful care of the shepherd.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

Psalm 23:2-3

Pastures and streams provide the essentials - food and drink - for sheep. After grazing in the meadow sheep lie down to ruminate – their appetite contented and their security protected by the vigilant shepherd. It’s a picture of shalom.

If the early morning grass is dew-laden, the sheep have no need for streams, but the sun in Palestine can burn off the dew quickly and then sheep need additional water.

The shepherd leads his flock to still waters where it is easy for them to drink. Satisfaction, tranquility, peace.

Cool Mountain Streams

Ten of Asia’s largest rivers begin in the Himalayan glacial fields. It is the largest supply of frozen water on the planet after the two polar regions - sometimes called "the third pole". The ice-melt from these vast reservoirs helps feed over 2 billion people - a third of the earth. Psalm 104 celebrates God's power and love as demonstrated in fresh-water mountain streams.


He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
Psalm 104:10-12

Photo courtesy of Pauline Watson, Lethbridge Alberta

Proportionately rivers and streams are a miniscule drop in the global water bucket. Over 97% of the world’s water is ocean and most of the rest lies frozen in snow-pack or glaciers or stored under-ground in aquifers. But there’s still a lot left and a small portion of that – about 13,000 cubic kilometers – flows down the Amazon, Nile, Congo and Mississippi, the Danube and Rhine, the Yangtze and Yellow, the St Lawrence, Volga, Ganges and Brahmaputra, MacKenzie, Murray and Mekong, the Rio Grande and the thousands of tributaries that feed them and hundreds of other rivers like them, draining the highlands to irrigate the thirsty plains below.

Vast ecosystems depend on these rivers. Grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees grow in the water or along the shore; insects swarm above them; fish ply the currents, graze the stony river-bed, and procreate in quiet places while other fish come in from the ocean to spawn in ponds upstream; birds feed on the grasses or fish or insects; snakes and frogs, turtles and alligators and mammals large and small quench their thirst or satisfy their hunger from the river’s bounty. All these inter-act in a dynamic balance of Nature. All of them call the river ‘home’.

Humans depend on rivers for food, drinking water and sanitation - why so many cities grow up along rivers. Rivers serve industry, commerce, travel and recreation. And the aesthetic beauty of rivers, whether the thundering majesty of Niagara or the peaceful quiet of a woodland stream - rivers are one of God’s wonder-filled gifts for nourishing the human soul!

But the Tibetan glaciers are shrinking – rapidly – and I wonder . . . what is it all going to look like a hundred years downstream from here? And I wonder how to pray for those who depend on these waters. Any thoughts?

Psalm 104 – Part Three

“What a Wonderful World!”

Centuries before Louis Armstrong painted “skies of blue and clouds of white” with his gravelly voice, artists and poets, children, lovers and scientists have stood speechless at the beauty of our elegant world.

Psalm 104 is a majestic ancient song, a melodic re-telling of the Genesis creation story. (For the text, see "Today's Water Word" sidebar.) This psalm describes God as Earth-maker, robed in sunlight, setting up tent in the blue sky with clouds-chariots and wind-couriers at the ready. Ocean depths below reflect the grandeur of Sky above. The physical world mirrors the glory of its Creator.

God wraps the planet with an ocean robe, the way a mother enfolds a newborn. Then as Earth emerges from infancy, vibrant mountain springs spill out of the ground and course down through streams and rivers, lakes and wetlands. The song describes animals of every kind nesting by these waters and bird-songs whistling from the trees. It sings about forests, grain-fields and vineyards nourished and nourishing because of the rains that fall from the sky.

Psalm 104 celebrates the beauty and fruitfulness of the earth, and attributes it all to God. It prays that this glory will endure for all time and that God will find as much pleasure and joy in it as we do –

The glory of GOD—let it last forever!
Let GOD enjoy his creation!
(v.31 The Message)

Wonder . . . Reflect for a moment on the stunning visual beauty of our world and the dynamic power of nature – either around you right now or depicted in this song.
Pause and be restful; sense the joy throbbing in creation – and an ache behind the joy - and thank God for the immense privilege of being part of it.

Psalm 104 – Part One