For Such a Time as This

When Queen Esther got the news she was stunned. An edict of genocide against your race will do that. A nation-wide holocaust was scheduled, but she was powerless to do anything about it. Or so she thought.

She was a woman in a man’s world, a world with strict laws against interfering with government policies. She may have been called Queen, but barging into the imperial court was punishable by death. Asking questions about tyranny was equally off-limits. The women of the harem of the court of King Ahasuerus were pretty playthings in this no-nonsense political world. And the King had not called to play with her for over a month.

Like many of us, the first thing Esther saw in this crisis was her own powerlessness.

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?

A Cup of Cold Water

Today we celebrate – Post #100

Since this Wonder of Water blog launched last July, I’ve been drinking draughts from God’s deep well and trying to make each post a spillway of fresh cold water for you.

So please lift a tall glass with me and repeat these words of Jesus - "If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, . . . you’ll surely be rewarded.” Matthew 10:42 NLT

That’s one cool promise!

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.

Rizpah and the Rain

Suffering sometimes triggers good soul-searching. And a three-year drought set King David on a desperate search for answers.

What he uncovered was a story of treachery and genocide that hadn’t registered a flicker on the national conscience.
See 2 Samuel 21:1-14.

It involved one of Israel’s tribal neighbors, the Gibeonites, who lived east of the Jordan. By ancient treaty, (see Joshua 9) these people had enjoyed protection and immunity from attack by Israel. But David’s predecessor, Saul broke faith and attempted to annihilate them – and almost succeeded.

Through Water to New Life

An un-named infant floats precariously in a papyrus basket among the reeds along the Nile, condemned by imperial edict, guilty of being a 3-month-old Hebrew man-child. Miraculously, he’s rescued by an Egyptian princess who names him Moses meaning ‘water-son’ or ‘drawn out of water’.

The Finding of Moses,  Edwin Long, 1886

He will grow up to become liberator of the Hebrew slaves, but first he has to undergo his own rescue, his own exodus, experiencing on a personal scale the rescue-through-water* which God would later accomplish through him for the whole nation at the Red Sea.

Many commentators note the courageous women who are heroines of this story: the Egyptian midwives who defy the Pharaoh’s edict, the mother and sister of Moses who risk their lives to protect him, the daughter of Pharaoh who finances his day-care and gives him his name. They lived in a patriarchal world, but it's impossible to ignore the vital role these women played.

No ordinary woman

September 3, 1943, sixty-seven years ago today, my mother and father were married. 

Continuing this week’s theme of wells and marriage, and in my late parent's honor, here is an interesting water story from The Book of Joshua.

When the Hebrew tribes invaded Canaan sometime around the 14th century BCE, the city of Debir in the northern Negev proved a tough town to conquer.

As the commander in charge of the southern campaign, Caleb offered an incentive to whoever successfully captured the city - his daughter Acsah’s hand in marriage. Her cousin Othniel rose to the challenge and won both the battle and the bride.

Offering a daughter as the prize for military victory hints at the position of women in that society, but this story also shows us the resourcefulness of this woman. She is not just a trophy wife. She understands the realities of life.

For her dowry, Acsah asks her father for farmland. She knows that marriage alone is not enough, that a young family needs some real estate as well as love to live on.

Hagar

The desert sun has no mercy.

Ishmael had swallowed the last of their drinking water miles ago. Now, faint with thirst, he began wailing with pain.

Hagar couldn’t go another step. Like thousands of desert mothers before her - and since - she was desperate, but spent.

This story will end well, but not yet. She and her son will survive, but their story must be told so we can understand.