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 pull of gravity that draws every river in the world relentlessly downstream is a symbol to Qoheleth of the fact that as the French say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same. Nothing improves; nothing really happens.

Once again today at the UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, it is not clear whether powerful nations will side-step the urgency of the situation or find the creativity and courage for decisive action to match it. Before we dismiss Qoheleth as a hopelessly jaded philosopher, we should let his realism temper our tendency to overrate our capacity to change the world.

On the other hand, fortunately, no other Bible writer shares Qoheleth’s bleak assessment of the meaning of water in our world.

Yes, water goes around and around, and yes, some things seem never to change. Yes, people seem to be as foolish today and to live as recklessly as people in ancient times. We could join Qoheleth in his cynicism, but ultimately the Bible’s landscape is “a geography of hope,” to use Wallace Stegner’s wonderful phrase.

That hope flows from two great visions of the world – a creational vision, since the natural world is a breath-taking expression of God’s majestic glory – and a resurrection vision, an eschatological vision of God’s new creation through Jesus transforming all around us that is broken. Taken together, these visions inspire and guide us in our task of stewardship and in every other expression of doing God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven.

Image Sources:
Ganges River, India - TopNewsIndia
Hvita River, Iceland - personal collection