Nile Nightmare

The nightmare jolted him awake. Pharaoh stood beside his beloved Nile as seven fat cows climbed out of the river and begin grazing along the bank. All was well until, ominously, seven scrawny cows came out of the same river, stalked the healthy cows and devoured them.

Cannibal cows! – a bad portent – something nasty was afoot on the banks of the sacred Nile.  Pharaoh woke with a start.

Engulfed

It is the darkest psalm in the Bible, anguished from start to finish. God is hidden and silent; the singer is terrified, abandoned, engulfed by despair.

Your terrors surround me like a flood;

they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;

darkness is my closest friend.

Psalm 88:14-18

Like being lost at sea in thick fog, these deep-water terrors describe clinical depression - an ordeal of extreme mental suffering and hopelessness.

We might wonder what a poem like this is doing in a book of faith like the Bible.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Water is nature’s first mirror. It reflects mountains, trees and sky

to create some of creation's most evocative art. 


Water photo-copies the reality around it and mirrors it back to us with fresh perspective and insight.

In Aesop’s fable, a dog with a bone sees his reflection in the river; greedy for the bone in that other dog’s mouth, the dog barks – and his bone drops into the river. It's not just a story about dumb dogs, it’s a cautionary tale about human greed.

The classics also tell about Narcissus who fell in love with his own image in water and became incapable of loving anyone else – a warning about the paralysis of vanity and self-absorption.

Water Into Fine Wine

I spent the week-end cleaning old wine bottles in preparation for filling them this week.

Water is a great cleaning agent, but it has even nobler roles in the world of wine.

For Better or Worse . . .
It was a wedding host’s worst nightmare - and a bad omen for the marriage. At mid-point in the reception, the wine ran out. The celebration sagged and the guests would soon start leaving. It smacked of bad planning, embarrassing poverty or, worse, shabby hospitality.

Enter the mystery guest. Without fanfare, almost before anyone knew what had happened, Jesus replenished the depleted store of wine, and the party continued.


Water, Love and Marriage

This third post on Water, Love and Marriage is a strange but beautiful picture of a bride getting cleaned up for her wedding – and surprisingly, it’s the bridegroom himself, at enormous personal cost and sacrifice, who bathes her and dresses her in dazzling silk.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word. . . so she might be unstained, without wrinkle or any other blemish.   Ephesians 5:25-27

My good friend Glenn Smith in Montreal, says that Canadians have a hard time grasping this vibrant water metaphor. Canada has an abundance of water - 7 percent of the world's renewable supply of freshwater and 20 percent of Earth’s frozen freshwater locked in glaciers and the polar ice cap.

Dance With the One Who Brung Ya

In keeping with my Water and Marriage theme of the week – my anniversary being tomorrow, it’s not just Shania Twain who sings about staying with the one who brought her to the dance.

The ancient wisdom of Israel also recognized the folly of infidelity. (Proverbs 5:15-17)

Drink water from your own cistern,

running water from your own well.

Should your springs overflow in the streets,

your streams of water in the public squares?

Let them be yours alone,

never to be shared with strangers.

This proverb knows how enticing forbidden love can be; it urges us to guard our hearts and marriage, to resist the beguiling call to squander our sexual energies with strangers. Seeking intimacy outside your marriage is sure to ruin the dance, foul the well or rot the staves of your rain-barrel.

Many Waters Cannot Quench Love

Four years ago this week . . . Tiffany and I exchanged vows of marriage, vows of life-long devotion to each other.

Our ceremony included these words about water and love from Song of Solomon 8:7:

Many waters cannot quench love;

Neither can floods drown it.

Lots of water has streamed under our bridge since then, but it has not quenched the joy or love in our hearts.