The Ocean Speaks

In honor of my brother Phil who loves to sail and to write, here is an excerpt from an essay he wrote about the sea.

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Despite the ocean’s restless ambiguity, its confusing contrariness, its utter disregard of us, its entirely predictable infidelity to us – No! because of all those qualities - the ocean speaks to us of human life.

Early it is foggy along the bay, and in the coves and sometimes, in mysterious ways, out on the open water. The soft refracted light blinds us to the existence of anything beyond the self,

Landscape of Life

In the previous two posts, Water Cycle and Never Empty-Handed, we explored two wonders of the hydrologic cycle.

First is the wide array of effects that rain and snow have on the natural environment, both directly and multiplied through inter-action with other processes. The second is the parallel impact that God’s communiques have on the landscape of our hearts.

Like rain and snow, the Bible is designed by God to have a transforming effect on our lives.

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.

Water Cycle

Round and around it goes, steaming up as vapor and then falling as rain or snow. It’s the hydrologic cycle and it goes on endlessly day after day, night after night all over the world. A billion tons of water every minute - up and down. Every day about 12% of the vapor in the atmosphere falls to the earth and is replaced by a fresh supply.

And everywhere this enormous gift of rain or snowfall accomplishes a variety of essential services for our earth by cleansing the air, moderating the temperature and, most obviously, nourishing the plants and animals on the earth.

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.

Elijah's Dew-Free Zone

It had been a grim three years in Israel’s northern region. Ahab was one of the bad kings. In fact, it was said that he ‘did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him’ 2 Kings 16:32-33.

One of his vices was his foreign wife Jezebel who had a special fondness for the sexually explicit Baal cult. ‘Human orgies lead to fertile fields’, she told them, and far and wide, Ahab’s people gave it a try. Her influence was pervasive; Asherah poles, Baal idols and hundreds of Baal priests filled the land.

So God sent the prophet Elijah with a message to Ahab. "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word" 1 Kings 17:1.

This was not good news. In northern Israel rain is usually plentiful and agriculture flourishes. No rain or dew was a death sentence for thousands of people. It was a serious ultimatum - abandon Baal worship or face the consequences.

Break-through

Guerilla warfare depends on evasion, stealth and surprise, and David was a master at the game. He had honed his skills through 20 years on the run from King Saul, but now that Saul was dead, David faced an even more formidable foe. The combined Philistine confederacy was moving in for the kill. 2 Samuel 5:17-25.

When David learned this he reverted to guerilla tactics instead of direct assault. He retreated to the caves near the Dead Sea and prayed for God’s counsel. With divine direction he attacked and routed the Philistines decisively.

Coming Clean - Starting Over

Things weren't going well for Israel. Politically they were fragmented, they ware militarily impotent and economically depressed. For decades they had experimented with local religious practices and were mired in idolatry. Somehow they were now at a breaking point - and breaking points can become turning points.

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'.

Speak to the Rock

Twice In the extended story of the Exodus, God miraculously provided desperately-needed water from a rock - with Moses using his staff as a cudgel.

In the second of these stories, near the end of the 40-year migration, we read,

The LORD said to Moses, "Take the staff, and gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."

Learning to Trust - or Distrust God

At the end of forty years, God told Moses that the years of Israel’s deprivation in the desert had had a purpose. 'My design', God said, was ‘to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart” Deuteronomy 8:2. 'As a father disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you’ (v.5) ‘to do you good in the end’ (v.16).

Hunger and thirst are powerful tests – and God wanted Israel to internalize deep in their consciousness a conviction that they could trust their covenant Partner. Experiencing God’s provision of water and food in God's time would lay a foundation of trust in other areas of life. But Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test. They were habitual whiners, constantly grumbling against God, testing God’s patience.