A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Tomorrow is All Saints Day, when the church remembers and pays tribute to its spiritual ancestors.

In Hebrews 12 they are called “a cloud of witnesses”, a great throng that grows larger every day and that provides huge motivation for us who are still alive and struggling to finish our race.

Hallowe’en is the secular precursor where kids dress up to impersonate (or scare off) the ghosts of the departed - or simply to play make-believe for a night.

A Garden Fountain

In recent posts we’ve been considering the significance of the Garden of Eden for human vocation and environmental stewardship.

Eden is also the Bible's original setting where a man and woman first set eyes on each other. So it is entirely fitting that the Song of Songs, which is full of extravagant poetic description, uses garden and water imagery to depict the intimacy and vibrancy of marital love.

Dear lover and friend,
you're a secret garden,
a private and pure fountain.
Body and soul, you are paradise, . . .
A garden fountain, sparkling and splashing,
fed by spring waters from the Lebanon mountains.
Song of Songs 4:12-15 MSG


In the exotic language of this song, this is an extended metaphor of sexual intimacy.

River-bank Righteousness

The vivid river imagery of Eden shows up again and again in the Bible. It's simply the imagery of Life.

Israel’s first psalm uses it to depict the flourishing of people rooted in God’s life-giving torah. (See my blog-post Feb 25/2011.) This song impressed itself on Israel’s great weeping prophet. Jeremiah expanded the contrast of the river-nourished life and preached it amid the political upheaval and moral decadence of his world.

To Serve and Protect

In the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2:5-15, Adam’s priestly task also included a protective role. He was to ‘tend’ the garden and to ‘watch over’ it. Other translations say to ‘keep’ it or ‘take care of’ it.

The Hebrew word for ‘keep’, samar, is a military term. It is exactly the same word used in the next chapter when the angel with a flaming sword ‘guards’ the way to the tree of life against intruders. It is used again in the fourth chapter in Cain’s retort, “Am I my brother’s keeper?

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.

Partnering with the Creator

The Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2:5-15 illustrates how we human beings were created to serve our Creator as partners-in residence.

The narrator notes two critical agents necessary for sustaining a fruitful landscape – the human and the divine, the gift of rain and the effort of grounds-keepers. Ecology is a partnership in which the Creator initiates and the human creature responds and both depend on the other. The Creator won’t initiate the process until his partner is ready.

Garden of Eden - Vocation

Before the Garden of Eden was planted, the Book of Genesis describes the world as barren and uncultivated: “neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land." Genesis 2:5-6 NLT

Great potential was going to waste. Parts of the earth were dry from lack of rain and other parts were drenched by the inundation of streams, but neither had yet been cultivated because there was no one to harness the waters and apply them to any useful agriculture.

Contentment

It can probably be argued that the wealthy King Solomon was a victim of his own success. His capacity to produce fed an almost bottomless craving for more. But at least he had the insight to recognize the power of greed. His collections of proverbs includes this gem:

"There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, 'Enough!':
the grave, the barren womb,
land which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, 'Enough!'
Proverbs 30:15-16

Think about these four places in Nature where demand is fierce and insistent with an insatiable craving for more:

CSI - Ancient Israel Water Ritual

What should you do if a dead body is found in a field, and your basic detective work cannot discover a killer? Here is an ancient water ritual that ensured that cold cases didn’t just suffer the indignity of civil neglect.

You can read the extended ritual in Deuteronomy 21:1-9. Here is a brief summary:

Drinking It In

Thanksgiving Gratitude Edition

Guest Writer - Kathy Legg

Land that drinks in rain often falling on it and produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. Hebrews 6:7

I live in a semi-arid zone, where rain does not often fall. And when it does the hard dry clay soil may not be well able to drink it in! It pools and puddles on the surface, or runs off in rivulets.

Harvest Providence

This week-end is Canadian Thanksgiving. . .

And this word from Psalm 65 seems like the perfect 'water' text for the occasion

You care for the land

and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God

are filled with water to

provide the people with grain,

You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

Psalm 65:9-10

A Floating Ax-head

There’s a water story about Elisha that frankly stretches my credulity.

The school of prophets which Elisha led was clearing trees in the Jordan River valley to build a larger place to live. Suddenly someone’s ax-head flew off and fell into the river. What’s worse than losing your tools is losing a tool you borrowed from somebody else. So the poor man turned to the master and explained his plight.

“Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. 2 Kings 6:6

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.