The Scent of Water - Wells of Hope

In Job 14, the beleaguered wise man asks a lot of questions trying to solve the riddle of life and death.

Using a string of similes, Job ponders our human mortality – we’re like flowers that wither, fleeting shadows, day laborers (here today, gone tomorrow), lakes and rivers that evaporate, soil and stone eroded by running water.

But knotted into this string of death images is the intriguing thing called hope. Is it a mirage? Is it a false dream, a futile longing, that our lives have meaning and significance? Or does the world contain hints that point to a reality bigger than death?

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.

Words of the Wise

Springs and fountains are wonderful gifts of nature that give access to the underground aquatic treasure of the earth. They can serve as apt metaphors of what  flows out of the human heart.

For example, Proverbs 10:11 says, ‘the words of the godly are a life-giving fountain, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence' . 

Our world is awash in words - tweets, blogs, books, whispers, broadcasts, advertizing, sermons, lectures. 

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

Beer-sheva

The previous post, Fertile Crescent, told how Abraham responded to the call of God to leave the good life of Mesopotamia and travel to a place God would show him. Genesis 12 tells how “he set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.”

After traveling through the land he settled in the Negev. Why he chose that challenging terrain we’re not told; perhaps because it was more sparsely settled than other areas.

Before long a severe famine in the area forced Abraham to travel east to Egypt in search of food, but he returned when he could to the Negev, settling in the eastern region near Beer-sheva. See Genesis 21:22-34. And to support his cattle and sheep-herding enterprise in an arid land like this, Abraham needed a significant amount of water, which meant he needed wells. So Abraham’s servants did a lot of digging.

Polluted Well

Keeping water clean takes a lot of vigilance.

Proverbs 25:26 says, “like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked.”

Everybody using a spring or a well depends on the purity of the source. If a well-shaft is not kept secure things will fall into the well and pollute the water. If animals foul the ground around a spring, or if industries drain toxins into the ground nearby, the aquifer can be compromised and the water made undrinkable.

In the same way, a leader who accepts a bribe destroys trust and fouls the credibility of the workplace. An inspector who looks the other way, instead of being true to her duties, undermines the system she was hired to protect.

Artesian Well

In 1126, a well was drilled in the province of Artois in north-west France.  Free-flowing water poured out of the ground. In later centuries similar wells across Europe came to be known as wells of Artois, or 'artesian wells'. An artesian well is one where underground pressure on a source of water causes the water to rise above the ground. No pumping is required to draw the water out of the ground.

In his book Simply Christian NT Wright describes a similar phenomenon - a hidden spring that bubbles up irrepressibly within human hearts and human societies, the deep subterranean yearning we call spirituality.

Baca - You Can't Skirt This Valley

Life is a journey. For some it's an exciting adventure, for others a plodding task, lonely and futile. For people of faith like the singer of Psalm 84, life is a pilgrimage, a journey towards God.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty ...

My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God (v2).

The singer yearns to be in God’s presence and can’t wait to arrive at her destination, but her song is about the journey itself – the rigors and rewards of the road.

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'.

If You Had Only One Wish . . .

Kaitlin Boyda really knew how to live.  Here is an inspiring story from Compassion Canada

Kaitlin Boyda, who lived with a faith and compassion that inspired hundreds of people to give to water projects through Compassion Canada, passed away on Thursday last week, May 5, 2011 at the age of 17.

Kaitlin, from Lethbridge, Alberta, was diagnosed in the summer of 2009 with a cancerous brain tumour at age 16 and has spent the last year and a half battling its affects. When she was approached by the Children’s Wish Foundation in December 2010, she decided not to choose a wish to benefit herself, but to donate the wish to build a well for children in need in Uganda.

One Foreign Well, Please

A few years ago – well, actually some 27 centuries ago, but in a time not much different from our own, armies strutted about the middle east, conquering and being conquered. Assyria dominated the Fertile Crescent for three centuries until they were overthrown by the Babylonians, then the Persians and then the Greeks.

But in 688 BCE, the king of Assyria was flexing his muscle. In his early years as king, Sennacherib built a palace in Nineveh that was, in his words, without rival. He built a stone-lined canal and the world’s first aqueduct to water his palace gardens, diverting water across a valley from a river 80 kilometers away.

An effective military enforced his control of a far-flung  empire. He overthrew northern Israel and replaced its king with his own puppet.

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.

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.

Dance With the One Who Brung Ya

In keeping with my Water and Marriage theme of the week – my anniversary being tomorrow, it’s not just Shania Twain who sings about staying with the one who brought her to the dance.

The ancient wisdom of Israel also recognized the folly of infidelity. (Proverbs 5:15-17)

Drink water from your own cistern,

running water from your own well.

Should your springs overflow in the streets,

your streams of water in the public squares?

Let them be yours alone,

never to be shared with strangers.

This proverb knows how enticing forbidden love can be; it urges us to guard our hearts and marriage, to resist the beguiling call to squander our sexual energies with strangers. Seeking intimacy outside your marriage is sure to ruin the dance, foul the well or rot the staves of your rain-barrel.

Wells of Joy - Part Two

Share the well,

Share with your brother

Share the well, my friend

It takes a deeper well

to love one another

Share the well, my friend

Caedmon’s Call, “Share the Well”

People who experience God’s well of Joy just can’t keep the pleasure for themselves, especially when they see the suffering of others.

Paul Loney is a Canadian water engineer. He and his wife Grace saw the heart-wrenching effects of bad water in the Ethiopian village of Keraro, home to about 5,000 people.

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.

Spring Up, O Well!

It's Labor Day.  So here is a biblical story about water and work.

Towards the end of Israel’s 40 year migration from Egypt, the people and their flocks were - as always - in dire need of water. God told Moses, 'you assemble the people; I’ll provide the water.'

The next thing we know, the people are celebrating around a fresh flowing artesian spring. Imagine the ooohs and ahhhs of relief, the laughter and splashing, the cheers of thirsty, sun-weary souls enjoying fresh cold spring-water.

Jacob's Second Kiss

Josef von Führich,  Jacob Encountering Rachel, 1836

It is only the second kiss mentioned in the Bible – and it happened beside a village well.

No doubt Rebekah told her son Jacob, how as a young woman she had watered a stranger’s camels and gained a husband for her initiative (see previous posts). Now, twenty years later, Jacob himself stood by that same well.

The most breath-taking girl he had ever seen was leading her flock to water. Some dim-witted shepherds were loitering, waiting for help to move the large stone well-cover so they could water their herds (and perhaps ogle or flirt with the girl). Jacob, a master of spontaneity, single-handedly hefted the massive stone away from the well-mouth and drew water for the woman and her sheep.

Rehoboth - the essence of home

After his neighbors disputed with Isaac over two earlier wells, Isaac dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, "Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land." Genesis 26:22

In my last post I explored the story of Isaac and his neighbors in the northern Negev and the well which he named ‘Rehoboth’ in gratitude for the ‘wide-open space’ it gave him to enjoy good relations with his neighbors.

 

That story has personal significance because my home is named Rehoboth.

My wife Tiffany is a hydrogeologist, a well specialist. A few years ago, reading Isaac’s story she was struck by his choice of a name that enshrined the values of freedom, space and harmonious relations with neighbors. She named her house Rehoboth.

A year later she welcomed me into her life and now together we work to make our home a spacious place, to fulfill the meaning of its name.

Isaac also had a remarkable wife, Rebekah, who knew a thing or two about wells - and about hospitality.

Rehoboth - space to be neighbors

As his herds increased, so did Isaac’s need for water. And when his crops flourished, the jealousy of his neighbors over-flowed. They fouled his wells with rocks and dirt and eventually evicted him from the region.

In a day when revenge and dominance was a sign of strength lest your opponents sensed fear and weakness. Isaac showed remarkable restraint. He intuitively knew the proverb that a soft answer can turn aside wrath.

Spring in the Gerar Valley today

Isaac left his crops and moved his herds elsewhere – to the Gerar valley where his father had dug wells and pastured flocks decades earlier. Local herdsmen had filled them in after the old man died, but Isaac re-excavated them and continued the family cattle business.

Prosperity makes enemies as well as friends - and the local herdsmen harassed the wealthy newcomer. When Isaac dug a new well, his neighbors claimed prior right to the resource. Isaac named the well “Argument” and walked away from it. They contested the next well, so Isaac named it “The Well of Anger” and abandoned it too.

Patiently Isaac outlasted his adversaries. He dug a third well over which no one fought. He named it "Rehoboth" – Wide-Open Spaces – in gratitude for the elbow-room it gave him and the opportunity to live peaceably among strangers – and to flourish together, sharing the natural resources.