Holiday Pics - No 3 Thirstless

By inspiration of my wife I offered this chap some water on a hot day in the Grandmaster's Palace in Valetta.  You could hardly have a grander place!  You could hardly have anything more welcoming than some water on what was a very hot day.  But he didn't drink any: there was grandeur,  me, real refreshment but, in his case, no life.

Sometimes when, in the glories of worship we share the life of God in his Word we offer real refreshment in the grandest of spiritual palaces.  But there is not always drinking.

Yikes!

So I decided to press the Google home screen Halloween thingy.  It tells me about witches.

A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft, which is the use of magical faculties, most commonly for religious, divinatory or medicinal purposes.

Origin: Early human cultures
Grouping: Homo Sapiens
Sub-grouping: Supernatural human
Food source: Strange Brew, candy
How to avoid: Don't eat red apples from strangers; hide if you see a flock of flying monkeys
How to defeat: Throw a pail of water

 

The definition is decent enough, the origin and grouping somewhat dissonant with the sub-grouping (surely a supernatural human originates Somewhere Else and is more like a super-group than a sub-group).  Still, this is all serious stuff in a way.

 

No, wait.  Someone in the Googleplex thinks , 'It's about the kids really - let's get kid-friendly' and plonks in some comic food sources - especially candy.  After all we don't want anyone - nay, even any animal (vegans can be witches too!) getting eaten.

 

Hey no we don't want our kids to feel that the witches might really be able to GET them.  Let's make witches really easy to avoid.  Strangers and Monkeys take a hit here.

 

And given the limited possibility of having eaten such an apple proffered by the stranger, there is a moderately easy solution via a pail of water (though I imagine if practised in the child's bedroom this endangers the child's life from an irate parent).

 

Well, what fun that was.

 

Not.

 

Because the first parts are true (for supernatural human read in harmony with the divine creative principal which is the Witches' own definition) it would be useful for Google to have stuck to the facts later on.

 

The food source is the same supermarket or farm shop or village market as everyone else. 

 

Avoidance is nigh on impossible - and very discriminatory.  I'm quite surprised that Google have got away with that.  It's not going to play well if they try the same thing about Atheists, Muslims or any other religiously orientated definition of people.

 

How to defeat.  Again Google has gone all discriminatory.  Google wants to defeat a religious expression?  At least on this last point Monotheists and Witches can agree that there is - in the spiritual sense - a conspiracy of victory and defeat which spans the centuries.  Sometimes it's been expressed very unpleasantly one way or another.

 

Let me say this in sympathy of witches:  I really don't think that Google has any right to seek their defeat, or encourage children to do so.  Furthermore the average Pagan Witch would have a great deal more respect and harmony with a pail of water than a global Western-based behemoth corporation or the targeting child.

 

Yet in its simple way Google has stumbled upon spiritual warfare.  Where there is supernatural there is battle and, in the End, defeat or victory leading to harmony.  The Bible describes this as the Lord Jesus eventually putting all his enemies beneath his feet.  The Witch, on the other hand, might describe victory as beliefs in the likes of Jesus or Mohammed being subsumed in the great creative divinity god/goddess/force thingy.

 

If ordinary humans are to be on the winning side spiritually, the Bible explains, they'd be a lot wiser to put down the bucket of water and climb (as it were) the hill with a cross on it where one of them who was also God defeated other spiritual powers by the greatest possible sacrifice.  Blood, not just water.

Free

It wasn't especially hot today.  But for me it was extraordinary none the less.

 

First, I was walking along through the town and decided to buy a bottle of fizzy water.  It's Market Day.  There are people everywhere and lines of people in all the cheap shops.  I decide that I have no time to line up so I'll get my drink in a more expensive shop.

 

A strange conversation ensues.  I don't have enough change so I offer a £10 note.  This requires over £8 in change.  As the lady (I think she is the owner) starts to get the change together I hit upon some extra change in another pocket.  I offer the change to make it easier for her.  She looks at the change.  Says in slightly broken "English you want the change?" and proceeds to give me the ten pounds back while taking her change back.  So far so good.  So I offer the right money.  She says, "You have paid" and I say "I have not" and she says, "No, that is good -it is finished - you paid" and (she is a slightly irritable lady) shoves the till shut and sits back down saying thank you and expecting me to leave.  I have a free drink having placed all kinds of stuff on her counter but having been given it all back, and a drink.  All of which might not be very bloggable were it not for this afternoon.

 

This afternoon I was visiting the hospital.  It is a decent journey and with no drink in the car I headed into the Café before doing my visit.  As it happened, and keeping the calories decently low, I set out to purchase the same kind of fizzy water again.  And a dark chocolate  because I'd had no lunch.  The lady in front of me was served.  Then a young, business-looking lady kind of pushed in the line in front of me (I think I was dozingly debating whether to have exactly the same bottle as in the morning).  I was politely  frustrated as I was in a bit of a hurry and she asked for four different drinks for her party.  Ah well.

Then she said, "And I'll pay for this gentleman's drink and chocolate too".  I looked up. "Please", she said.  "I have to use up the company expenses or Ill get offered less next year.  I know it sounds ridiculous and it is.  But I'll buy them".  And so she did.

So I sat down and drank my second free drink of the day (this time with a free chocolate too!)

Or was it the third? Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life

Tides

Looking at the wreckage - physical, psychological, economic - from the great tsunami tide in Japan my memory triggered a strangely reminiscent picture that I saw in the Maritime Museum in Liverpool.  It is called 'Waiting for the Tide'

In Hoodless's painting all the big things - the river, the steamer, the famous waterfront buildings - are peripheral to a chugging tug and a pile of stuff that is just lying there, as on docksides things do.  Waiting.

While the tsunami leaves everything washed up and waiting - waiting to be found, waiting to rebuild, waiting to return - other tides are waited for.

This is why, in so much Biblical imagery, the overwhelming wall of water that has so devastated thousands of lives is, rather, a picture of blessing - he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of Yahweh drives along.  The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares Yahweh.

There is a flood that rescues as well as a flood that destroys.

Blog Action Day

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhoea, dysentery and other illnesses.

90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old. Many of these diseases are preventable. The UN predicts that one tenth of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply and sanitation.

 

Every year our church gives thousands of pounds to help directly with building wells for people in Tanzania.  We praise God for our members Andrew and Miriam who have been willing to give some of the best years of their lives to help people have this most basic resource.