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.

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

Salty Pools

In my post last week I wrote about the positive influence of salt. It reminded me of a post last month about the proverb that you can’t draw fresh water from a salt-water well. That was about the inconsistency of praising God in one breath and cursing people with the next. Today I want to link the two with another story about remediating wells.

When wells become brackish or saline, they become useless. This is what happened after the tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The day after Christmas 2004 when a tsunami struck the coast of Sumatra Island, large boats were hurled inland and thousands of people were washed out to sea – and some 30,000 shallow wells suddenly became saline.

A Well-Watered Garden

It frustrated God like crazy.  Folks were praying and practicing their rituals religiously but under the surface they had no heart for what really mattered to God.  God lamented their superficiality -

Day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
They seem eager for God to come near them -
or as The Message says,
'they love having me on their side.'  Isaiah 58:2

But their hearts were as dry as dust.  Their Sabbath practice was actually mal-practice, observing their fasts but living by their fists; they appeared humble on the outside, but inwardly they were proud, self-serving and exploitive. (v. 3) And God had had enough of it.

Isaiah sketched out for them what a God-honoring faith might look like,

Drenched By the Dew of Heaven

The dew fell generously on the gardens of Nebuchadnezzar. His palace and gardens were one of the wonders of the world and he took pride in his architectural achievements. But he was about to learn an important life-lesson from the silent power of the dew.

As he tells his story in Daniel Chapter 4, he was at home in his palace contended and prosperous, when he had a dream that made him afraid, terrified him, in fact. He dreamed of a magnificent tree cut down by a decree from heaven; the tree had a human mind, but it lost its sanity and became like an animal. exposed to the weather for seven years.

A palace advisor named Daniel interpreted the dream as a warning to the king and urged him to practice mercy and justice.

Never Empty-handed

In my previous post we looked at the marvelous gift of rain and that showers down on the earth every hour of the day and night, achieving a vast array of benefits in the environment. It augments alpine and arctic snow-packs, refreshes rainforests and woodlands, nourishes meadows and grain-fields and then by returns by evapo-transpiration into the skies to do it all again.

It’s the original re-use and re-cycle process built into the universe.

Deep Sea Fishing

In my April 25 post I wrote about one of Jesus’ final conversations with his friend Simon Peter. Today we look at one of the earliest encounters between the two men as recorded in The Gospel of Luke, Ch 5.

It was Simon’s lucky day – but it hadn’t started out that way. After a fruitless night of fishing, he had come home with an empty boat. For a professional fisherman that spelled frustration, no respect, no income and the added burden of having to clean and repair your gear in hopes of a better outing tomorrow.

But then Jesus told him to “push out into deep water and let out your nets for a catch” Simon took up his challenge – and as soon as his nets hit the water the lake erupted in thrashing fish and a haul so large his nets began to tear apart. His partners on the shore leapt to his aid and together they pulled in a catch that almost swamped both their boats.

New Birth

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the most water-drenched of all C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories. 
It tells about an obnoxious young boy named Eustace who took refuge from a rain-storm in a cave that turned out to be a dragon’s lair.  In the dim light of the cave he discovered hoards of gold and silver and jewelry. He filled his pockets and slipped a magnificent bracelet on his arm – and then fell asleep.

When he awoke, his arm throbbed because it had grown larger overnight and was covered with reptilian scales. Having fallen asleep “with greedy dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

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.

Erosion

This is Canada’s Water Week, culminating on World Water Day, March 22.

But today - one of the powerful effects of water on landscape and the human soul - erosion.

Erosion is part of the natural order. It can be devastating like a tsunami, but it can also produce magnificent scenery like the beautiful Garden of the Gods in Colorado, the Grand Canyon and the famous White Cliffs of Dover.

Erosion and the chemical process of dissolution that carves out cave systems all over the world, are signs of the universal law of attrition. Nature wears things down. Nature and time gnaw away at us – ‘erosion’ has the same Latin root as ‘rodent’. Whether gradually or ferociously, everything moves from order to disorder.

Earthquake and Tsunami

Apocalyptic!  That is how one news anchor described the scene in Japan in the wake of an 8.9 strength earthquake and its tsunami aftermath!

The focus of this blog is the wonder of the natural world of water and what it shows us about God's grace.

The stunning video footage of the tsunami shows us convincing evidence of the devastating power of water to splinter buildings, roll boats and cars, trains and aircraft like wine-corks and wipe out whole towns.

Where we might ask is the grace of God?

Noah Part 3 - The Rainbow Connection

Photo Credit: Marcheta Gibson

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.  William Wordsworth

I remember waking up the morning after a rain-storm aboard a yacht in Desolation Sound, British Columbia. My wife had died seven months earlier and despite the majestic beauty of the scenery, the name Desolation Sound echoed the recent deluge of loss in my life.

As I raised the deck hatch that morning I stared up at a magnificent double rainbow arched across the sky above the shrouds and mast of our boat. My heart leapt as those rainbows silently but eloquently proclaimed promise and hope to my soul.

The ancient story of Noah and the Flood is crowned with a rainbow.  By sheer mercy and grace the ark and its inhabitants survived the devastating flood. And by sheer mercy God does this over and over again in our lives. There are experiences in life that overwhelm us and change our world forever. But God is a master of new beginnings.

Sweet Harmony

Psalm 133 is a lyric gem about harmony in families, societies and nations. It's short but full of wonder, realism and hope.

How wonderful, how beautiful,
when brothers and sisters get along!
It's like costly anointing oil
flowing down head and beard,
Flowing down Aaron's beard,
flowing down the collar of his priestly robes.

Harmony is a wonderful thing. When the whole family is getting along and enjoying each other, it’s a great feeling. It’s heaven on earth.

At the consecration of a Jewish high priest, the nation gathered together as one. The ceremonial oil of consecration was poured over the priest’s head in the name of all the tribes; it spilled down his face and drenched his robes. You could smell the fragrance, you could hear the cheering in unison, you could sense the joyful spirit of togetherness – one nation, one faith, one prayer of brotherhood. Oil flows with exuberance - all for one and one for all.

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.

Land and Sea

“God said, ‘Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.’”

Genesis 1:9

Photo Credit: Distantpeak.com

It’s the second dazzling water event in the great Genesis Song of Creation – the emergence of the earth out of the Sea at the voice of God - the transformation of a featureless ocean into a sculptured landscape!

Antrim Coast Northern Ireland

Imagine the forces that came into play that day, as tremors ripped through the earth’s crust, trenches gashed the sea-floor, hollowing out deep marine basins - and elsewhere giant crags of land thrusting up through the surface of the sea, catching the glint of the sun.

The dry land gives us a place to stand, to build and grow. The earth buffers us from the ocean waves, yet it drinks in the rain and holds enough water to sustain grasslands and cedar forests. Trees and people need to be rooted, as do cities and civilizations. We need the land just as we need water.

► Day One gave us Light;
► Day Two, Air and Sky;
► Day Three divided Land from Sea.

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 . . .

The Wild Kisses of a Lion

In the last chapter of The Silver Chair. . . .

Jill and Eustace stood beside a beautiful fresh-flowing stream in bright sunshine. The only sound was heart-breaking funeral music from a faraway world. Aslan and the two children looked into the water.

"There on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay the king, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept."  Like Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, "even Aslan wept - great Lion-tears."

If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know the sadness that is deeper than words. The river of death is the inevitable end of every person’s life, but Lewis shows us that Death does not have the last word.

Aslan told Eustace to bring a rapier-sharp thorn and pierce his lion’s paw. A great drop of blood, “redder than all redness you have ever seen” splashed into the stream over the dead body of the king. And a transformation began.

The funeral music stopped. The king’s white beard turned fresh and then vanished. His sunken cheeks became round and red. His wrinkled face brightened - until the king leapt out of the water with boyish laughter and flung his arms around the Lion. “He gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.”

Bitter Waters Become Sweet

Three days searching the parched desert for water – and then suddenly – the glint of a spring-fed pool! It was no mirage. Cheers of excitement filled the air.

But when the Exodus refugees finally reached the water, it was undrinkable, brackish with mineral salts, bitter and foul to the taste. Marah - bitter waters! Frustration and disappointment over-flowed in a torrent of anger and despair and the cruel sense of being betrayed by God.

As leader, Moses cried out to God and God showed him how to remediate the water so they could drink it. From aching thirst, … to soaring hopes, … crashing disappointment and finally… refreshment!

That’s the surface story. But there’s always an under-current of wonder flowing through these water stories.