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

The Sound of Mountain Water

All earth brims with his glory.

Yes and Yes and Yes.

Psalm 72:19 The Message

A friend recently introduced me to the writings of Wallace Stegner, (1909-1993) an American writer, educator and conservationist. In one of his books on the western wilderness, The Sound of Mountain Water, Stegner recounts his earliest experience of a river at the age of eleven. His words resonate with the Biblical theme that “all the earth brims with God’s glory.”

Stegner writes:

Getting Carried Away

Guest Writer – Kathy Legg

His voice was like the roar of rushing waters

 and the land was radiant with his glory. Ezekiel 43:2

The Singapore afternoon hung hot and muggy. But the green tangled rainforest where Kevin and I walked was refreshingly cool and full of moist, earthy smells. This 3 hour trek around McRitchie Reservoir was a favorite hike of his. We carried day packs with provisions: bottled water, dried mangoes, sketch books, money for the tea hut at the journey’s end. But long before the journey’s end we learned firsthand about rushing waters: the roar and the glory.