Leadership

... a beautiful sunrise
on a cloudless morning, with grass glistening from recent rains. . ." 

That’s how King David describes the legacy of leaders who uses their God-given power to serve their people.

In recent days, millions of Egyptian, Tunisian and Lebanese people have clamored for new leadership. Unjust leaders breed anger and frustration and stifle hope.

In Over Your Head and Going Under

Sometimes life gets crazy – everything happens at once and you feel yourself going under. A child gets sick, a friend turns hostile, your wallet is empty, dead-lines converge, you're losing your capacity to hold it all together.

You’re being sucked under, over-whelmed.

Some of Israel’s songs express this kind of nightmare experience.
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
The floods engulf me.
Don’t let me sink;
Do not let the deep waters swallow me up.
Psalm 69

God, We're Thirsty

The worst times can inspire the most passionate songs:

O God, you are my God,
Earnestly I seek you;
My soul thirsts for you,
My body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1

King David was fleeing for his life. His son Absalom had staged a revolt, overthrown the crown and was consolidating his power in Jerusalem. David fled the city with a small band of supporters and headed east across the 20 km stretch of hills towards the Jordan.

David and Goliath

This iconic story celebrates the gutsy little guy taking on the giant and beating the odds.

But between the unlikely hero and the big bully lies a small creek-bed – and that creek holds the secret to what the fight was all about.

The valley of Elah was a strategic piece of real estate. It runs roughly east-west at a point where the Judean hills in the east drop down to the coastal plain inhabited by Philistines. The Philistines eye the valley as a corridor to the agricultural interior of Israel. Pushing their way inland up the valley they pose a formidable threat to assert dominance over Israel.

A Town Called Lifta

In the suburbs of northwest Jerusalem, on the edge of the busy Jerusalem-Jaffa highway, water flows from an ancient spring. It fills a small pool and then flows out into the Wadi-al-Shami.

This spring has a rich and tragic story to tell. Millenia ago it quenched the thirst of the early Canaanite inhabitants of the land. Across the centuries all manner of people have washed their faces and laundry in its waters.

It is mentioned in the Book of Joshua, Chapter 15:9 and 18:15 as “the spring of the waters of Nephtoah” at the time of the Isrealite occupation. Nothing else is told about this landmark except that it helped to mark the border between the tribal territory of Benjamin and Judah. It was not assigned to one tribe or the other, but as a shared resource, giving both tribes equal access to the waters.

No Shortage of Water

Moses sounds like a travel agent. . . After leading his people across the desert to the threshold of the Promised Land, he gives them a glowing description of the land before them.

The LORD is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. Deuteronomy 8:7

It is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it. Deuteronomy 11:11-12

After forty years in the dry desert this sounded like paradise - rain-water, ground-water and surface water in abundance, streams and pools and springs - a farmer’s paradise for sure - and a hydro-geologist’s dream.

Let Justice Roll Down

In Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963, he quoted the Hebrew prophet Amos when he said “we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Amos and MLK both lived in prosperous nations who were proud of their religious heritage. Both were appalled at how religion so often masked hearts of greed and hostility.

Amos roars out God’s disgust over religious piety:
I hate, I despise your religious feasts
Away with the noise of your songs.
Amos 5:22 NIV
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
Amos 5:24 The Message

Amos believed that justice was the life-blood of society as water is life for the land.