The Discipline of Reverence, Worship and Awe

This afternoon my wife and I walked with some friends in the woodlands above our home. We live on a protected moraine, vital to the re-charge of groundwater for our area. The past few weeks have been extraordinarily warm, so the snow is long gone, and the ponds are now a raucous chorus of frog songs. Moss on stones and rotted stumps virtually were glowing in the shafts of sun beaming into the still drab-brown woods waiting for spring.

Overcome by Awe

Some years ago I was cradling my new-born daughter in the middle of the night when I wanted to sleep and she didn’t. I passed the time by reading aloud from Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. It’s a tough story about the darkness of colonialism and of the human heart in general, not exactly bedtime reading for infants, but I needed to finish the novel for an assignment. She had no choice but to listen.

A better river story for children would be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – equally insightful into the human condition, but not quite as dark.

Today I'm pondering a river scene in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

Royal Priests

In the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:5-15, when Adam comes to the garden "to work it and care for it" we naturally assume the task of farming, tending the trees and plants, caring for the ecology of the garden.

The Hebrew word ‘abad’ in v.5 and 15 is a common word for agriculture and working a field, but in fact, it is more frequently used for the work of a priest.

Laver - God's Peace

When King Solomon replaced the Israel’s primitive tabernacle with a magnificent temple, he had a huge water-reservoir built to serve as the laver for the purification for the priests (1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2-6) It was so large – 15 feet across, 45 feet circumference and holding 16,500 gallons – that it was called a “sea”. This grandiose symbolic ocean illustrated the expansive dimensions of God’s grace and forgiveness.

But it also conveyed another level of meaning. Since the sea for Israel represented the chaotic forces of evil opposed to God, this artifact probably also symbolized “the forces of chaos that have been subdued and brought to order by the Lord who is creator of the world”(1) It affirmed that Yahweh was supreme over the Canaanite deities Yamm and Baal, gods of sea and storm.

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.

Icelandic Geyser

Last week I promised regular posts from Iceland on the wonder of water, but unfortunately the wonders of technology failed me.

Now that I’m back on-line, here’s a glimpse of one of Iceland’s most famous landmarks – a hot-water spring in the town of Geysir. That name comes from the Icelandic word for ‘gush’ – and gives its name to all geysers on earth.

Geysers occur when geo-thermally heated water becomes trapped in narrow fissures deep in the earth. Cool surface water flows down on top of this hot water and pressurizes it. The super-heated steam builds to the bursting point and then gushes upward, blasting out whatever volume of water lies above it.

Downpour

Three years with no rain had left the land depleted and dry.

The showdown on Mount Carmel between Yahweh and Baal had confirmed which god deserved worship.  "Yahweh is God," the people had chorused.  But Yahweh's purpose was not self-aggrandisement or public acclaim.  Yahweh was - and is - intensely passionate about people and their well-being. He cared too much for the land and its people to leave the soil dusty and dead.  Rain was desperately needed - and that was to be the next demonstration of the character of the true Rain-maker God.  Read the story in 1 Kings 18:41-46 

Showdown

The drought grew more intolerable by the day. Streams ran dry; crops failed. The king was frantic for grazing land for his herds while peasants ached with hunger. Disaster stalked the land. Something had to break.

In the third year of the drought, 1 Kings 18, Elijah went to confront King Ahab. When they met, Ahab cursed Elijah - 'you trouble-maker' he sneered. ‘On the contrary’, Elijah countered, "you and your family are Israel's trouble-makers by abandoning the Lord's commands and following the Baals" (I Kings 18:17-18). Elijah called for a spiritual show-down on Mount Carmel, a sort of religious duel between Yahweh and Baal.

Baptism and New Life

In the New Testament - 1 Corinthians 10:1 – St. Paul imagines Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea as a baptism. The imagery is obvious – water, death resurrection, new life - a defining event that birthed Israel’s national life as God’s people.

Today in churches, friends will often burst into applause when a friend is baptized, so it’s no surprise that Israel erupted in spontaneous worship and celebration on the far side of the water. Miriam led the women in song and dancing to celebrate their new life, their freedom.

Thundering Hallelujahs

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

Three times in the closing book of the Bible, we hear the cascading roar of rushing water.

The first ‘waterfall’ in the opening scene was the powerful voice of the Living Christ, giving the story-teller John a message of comfort and hope to his suffering church on earth.

The sound and sight of water cascading down rocks or thundering over the lip of a precipice does something to you. It soothes and energizes you at the same time. The water seems almost alive as it rushes forward and down – always down – almost like it was on a mission. Jesus, of course is the ultimate waterfall, plunging headlong into the mission of salvation for the whole of God’s creation.

Thirst-Quencher

It is one of the high-water marks of the Bible’s entire witness to water and the grace of God. It happened during the annual Jewish Festival of Tabernacles.

This late-summer festival looked back in history to Israel's exodus and God’s provision of water in the desert, and it looked ahead to the dream of Israel’s restored honor among the nations as predicted in Zechariah 14:16. Every year pilgrims came to Jerusalem from every direction in what Josephus called as “a most holy and most eminent feast.”
- Antiquities of the Jews, VIII, iv, 1.

* * * Feast of Tabernacles painting - Valerie R Jackson

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.

Joy to the World

It’s the Christmas carol that never intended to be one.

Joy to the World is Isaac Watt’s 1719 translation of the Psalm 98. But there’s nothing in that song about a baby or manger, about shepherds or angels.

It’s an ancient Hebrew song that summons the earth to shout for joy to God and burst into jubilant song because God is on the move! It calls on the sea to thunder an encore and rivers to add their applause in a rousing symphony that celebrates or anticipates the arrival of God’s wise and righteous rule over the earth.

Into Thin Air

NOTE - This particular post by far the most popular entry for 2010 on this Wonder of Water blog. I'd love to know why. Please add your thoughts below.

It happens in coffee shops day and night around the world . . . 

It wafts from the breath of every person on the planet . . .    

Mist rises from golf courses and wetlands ... Steam soars from industry stacks and tree-tops ... 

Water evaporates from the Bay of Bengal and transpires from plants.

Evapo-transpiration feeds the hydrologic cycle – that process that circulates water, purges the air and nourishes life on earth.

Thirsty No More

Guest contributor - Grace Jacobson


Sometimes you meet the strangest people at the water-cooler.

I’d never seen him before. We could have been any two thirsty people coming for a drink. How could he have known that behind my mask I was forever searching for love in all the wrong places?

Five times my dowry returned, I’d forgotten who I really am. I’d giving up the formalities and even worse, the hope of every finding my true love – or my true self. I came at noon to avoid the whispers of the gossips.

I could see right away that he was a Jew and I braced for the sting of his slur. But he merely asked for a drink. “What, no racist epithet?” I asked.

But he simply said that God is generous and if I knew who was talking to me and asked him for a drink, he’d be more than willing to give me a drink. I stared at him.

The Blue Marble

From space, Earth looks like a "blue marble" - 75% of it covered by water. The vast blue of the oceans laced by swirling white clouds showcasing the beauty and symmetry of God’s Creation.

Psalm 104 revels in Earth-maker's workmanship – sky, clouds and rain, rivers and wet-lands, wild-life and forests - and now (in my final post on this ancient hymn) the wide blue oceans.

The Hebrews were not a sea-going people, so biblical oceans usually roar wild and restless. But in this song, the ocean is spacious and hospitable,“teeming with creatures beyond number, living things, both large and small” – from tiny microbes and plankton to dolphins and manta rays, from corals and conchs to octopus and sperm whales. Yet despite the fullness of the sea, it is not crowded; there is plenty of room for ship traffic and for whales to cavort, calve, graze and migrate.