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.

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.

New Beginnings

After a four-week silence this blog is back – with a new name and a fresh focus. For the past 18 months I blogged about the Wonder of Water – 210 posts exploring references to water in the Bible and what they have to say to us about life today. You will soon be able to read many of these reflections – and more – in my new book Downstream from Eden.

In the last post I wrote before Christmas I used the phrase ‘downstream from eden’ to describe the less-than-ideal circumstances of our life journey in the real world. Yesterday was one of those, a milestone marker for me and my children.

Downstream from Eden

There is a river flowing through Bethlehem, but not one that you’ll find on any map or satellite imagery of the West Bank. But it’s a vital river all the same. Let me explain.

The Story of the Bible is book-ended by two beautiful river scenes, the Garden of Eden and the New Jerusalem. They introduce and give crescendo to the grand story of God’s ‘River of the Water of Life’ that flows through the entire drama of the Bible and the stories, songs and water observations featured in this blog.

The story of Eden describes the paradisal first home of the human family. Every kind of beautiful and fruitful vegetation flourished.

Eastern Hospitality

Centuries before the magi visited Bethlehem bringing exquisite gifts fit for a king, a desert sheik spotted three strangers lingering a short distance from his tents. With the vigor characteristic of middle-eastern hospitality, he hurried over to them and offered them a quick drink of water.

In the conventions of hospitality, you make the initial offer so small that to refuse would be an insult. Then,

In Praise of Amniotic Fluid

The amazing gift of water completely surrounds us long before we draw our first breath. And the wonder of it all dazzled me afresh each time I watched one of my children being born!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Psalm 139:13-15 NLT

When my wife was in labor with our first daughter, her nurse, who was also a friend and a seasoned midwife, whispered to her after several fruitless hours of labor, ‘I’m going to break your water, that will get things moving.’

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