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.
A river flowed through the garden watering it and enhancing the beauty of the landscape. The name Eden evokes a sense of pristine perfection, an uncorrupted paradise, the world as God intended it.

Our world today is no longer pristine and uncorrupted, but it is still a place of incredible beauty and vitality. The gifts of Eden flow down to us in a thousand ways including the rain that waters the earth, and the forests and fields, rivers and lakes, birds and fish and animals of every kind. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.”

But obviously we no longer live in Eden. We’ve lost our innocence; we’re banished from the garden and we’ve drifted way downstream. The purity of the world is tainted; pollutants foul our waters and the food-chain, as well as our politics and our souls. Many of the human family live in environments that make mockery of the ideal of Eden.

Living ‘downstream’ means living our personal and social life in a less-than-ideal setting – which is where most of us live, where people cheat, crops fail, life gets hijacked by cancer or divorce. Rivers flood, water-mains burst, bosses and neighbors are not always neighborly and industries degrade rivers. Our private souls go dry and we wonder what can quench a thirst that burns deeper than the throat. It is a river of all our hopes and fears.

That’s where Bethlehem joins the river of humanity. Something happened there that changed the downstream course of this river. As the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem” says,

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

The Christian story is about Jesus ‘paddling downstream with us’, living his “one wild and precious life” among us on the river of the real world. Where the hopes and fears of all humanity converge, Jesus comes and finds us. He heals us and invites us to join him in his mission of bringing healing to both the river and the land, transforming “the waterless waste into splashing creeks” (Isaiah 41:18) MSG.

There is no literal river in Bethlehem, and the water-woes of the present-day city reflect the need for both political and social healing and transformation. But from the advent of Bethlehem's most famous son flows a river of grace that is the very heart of Christmas and of the world to come.

Have a blessed Christmas. God bless you. I hope to post you again early in the new year.

Image Sources:
Rogue River, Oregon - Phil Knight
Lehigh River - Bethlehem Pennsylvania - Tim Kiser Wiki Commons
Bethlehem - HelloKids