Water is essential for life. Hence rivers and creeks are important parts of the natural landscape and are our focus in this final week exploring the season of creation. Rivers are like the arteries of the land, carrying life-giving water to where it’s needed. But when there is too much rainfall, rivers can flood causing considerable devastation and when there is too little rainfall, creeks and rivers can dry up.
Living in an arid land, God’s people Israel knew plenty about drought and the famines that followed. Prophets such as Amos drew on this imagery and compared the unjust actions of a people ignoring the word of God to the land lacking water. In both cases there is no life. Amos called instead for justice to roll on like a river. Likewise in Genesis 6-9, God sees the unjust ways of humanity and floods the earth before providing the sign of the rainbow and the promise to never flood the whole earth again.
In this country, rivers have always been important. They provided food and life to indigenous people for millennia. For we second peoples, rivers have provided water for stock, irrigation to grow crops and for hydroelectricity. Yet we have done much damage to our rivers through building dams, through extracting too much water for irrigation and by allowing excess fertiliser to pollute the water. The massive fish deaths in the Darling River system in 2019 illustrated the effects of our greed and shortsightedness. The rivers are groaning and crying out for justice. Will we change our ways and value the life that rivers support or will we continue to see rivers mostly as a resource to be exploited for profit?
We will be holding a Zoom worship meeting this Sunday morning from 9.45 am. I will host the meeting from my home but it will be an opportunity to hold a larger (virtual) gathering and to see each others’ faces. We will be basing our worship on the attached worship@home resource for this week, so it would be handy to have a copy present. We can send you a link to the meeting or a phone number and meeting details if you sign up by emailing the Croydon UC church office on office@croydon.unitingchurch.org.au or using the form in the sidebar.
If you are unable to join us to participate online, click here for worship@home resources Rivers that provide life - 27 Sep 2020