I’m reading this beautiful novel right now. It’s a story about a weaver who lives on the edge of town. He has these strange big eyes and a hunched back from years at the loom. Before he moves to this town, he was a man of simple, but strong faith at Chapel. He was wrongly accused of theft and was left disheartened by his fellow man, and God, after being found guilty of the crime he didn’t commit.
He becomes a bit of a hermit in his new town and devotes his life to the loom and weaving, and most important to the money that comes in from his work. Money that is, for once, entirely his. There is nothing wrong with the money. There is nothing evil about his collecting and hoarding it. Each night, he counts his money and hides it away in the floor of his house. Then he eats, sleeps, and works some more so that he can make more money and watch the pile grow.
He closes himself into a small world of work and money. Accumulating what might be important, but is not most important. The less he spends, the more he has. The more his gold grows and makes him happy in his small world. He quietly lives a lonely life with his piles of money. Staying close to his piles of money.
Until one day, his gold is stolen from his house when he is away. It strips him down to nothing. Everything that mattered to him is gone and he is left, once again, bereft. He is completely lost without this thing he devoted his life to.
Not long after the loss of his money, a toddler stumbles into his house and curls up by his hearth. A little girl with golden curls. For a moment, he imagines his wealth has returned. And maybe it has.
His piles of golden coins have been traded for a pile of golden hair. I won’t spoil the rest of the story for you…but…
These piles of gold coins separated him from the flow of life and other people. He’s forgotten the flow of life. That even money is meant to come in and then goes out to be a part of a bigger picture than one’s self and one’s own world. There was nothing wrong with his accumulation of money, but it made his world small, insular, selfish, and stagnant. There was nothing flowing to nourish a heart and soul or other hearts and souls.
Those piles of golden hair reconnect him to a world around him and other people. The holding on to of money seems less necessary than the flowing goods to support a little girl and what she needs. He connects to the community that support him in the raising of this little girl. He returns to church and faith and what is bigger than himself and piles of gold. He is nourished in heart and soul, as he nourishes another in heart and soul.
He has returned to the overflowing Grace of God. To love.
If you’re curious, the story is George Eliot’s Silas Marner.
I’m sharing that story with you to get us to the Jordan River. Yes, we moved from England to Israel now.
The Jordan River is the place of baptism. The place where one chooses to let go to begin anew. The cleanse oneself and walk a new path. It’s where John the Baptist began his ministry. It’s where Jesus is baptized. It’s a flow and a beginning and a new beginning.
It might be called the river of the flowing grace of God.
The Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee. The Galilee is teeming with life. There is a lush ecosystem of fish, birds, animals, and plants. Then, the Sea of Galilee returns back to river and continues to flow. The Galilee takes its nourishment from the river, and continues to flow, to give back. To not only nourish itself, but to nourish what lays beyond itself. Receiving and then giving. A taking in of blessings and a letting go.
This is like God’s flowing love to us. We receive and are blessed and that blessing flows on by us sharing God’s Love. Not hoarding what we have been given, but being a part of the river of giving back. We are drops in the ocean. Just little things. Little things beloved by God and when we come together, we flow like the lush Sea, supporting one another and supporting beyond one another. Not just a drop, but together, a whole wave, together a whole ocean. Together…more.
We sometimes cling to things that seem so important. Holding on to the hoards of gold and the piles of treasures. Frightened that we might lose our treasures. Frightened that we might not have enough or be enough. Afraid that more blessings might not come to us again. We quietly, not meanly, but quietly shut ourselves off from the interconnectedness of life and living and one another. What matters most. God’s Love and the love we have for one another. We fear the risk involved to become a part of the greater flow of love and life. We are like Silas, not bad, but distracted by the shiny pretty things and limiting our potential, our growth, our work and gifts.
Those wonderful nourishing waters of the Jordan from the Sea of Galilee flow into another Sea. The Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea is fed by the same life giving waters as the Sea of Galilee. But the Dead Sea is…dead. There is no wonderful lush vegetation. There are no wonderful fishes or birds or mammals. It doesn’t make sense. What’s the difference?
The difference is that while the Sea of Galilee takes in that delightful water, it lets it go to flow on and continue to nourish the lands beyond. The Dead Sea has no outlet. It takes in the Jordan River. It takes and takes and takes, but it never gives back. There’s no outlet for the continuing flow. All of that goodness gets stuck and stagnates. The Dead Sea evaporates and gets more and more salty and lifeless. It’s not that the salt is bad. It’s too much. It’s the isolation and separation it creates.
It’s not that Silas Marner is doing anything wrong by hoarding his treasures, but he misses out on the nourishment of overflowing love. The love of receiving and the love of giving. The gold never makes him a “bad” man. He is still simple and gentle, but it limits his growth. It limits his loving nature. It separates and disconnects him.
There are many things that we cling to that limit us and hold us back from the overflowing love of God and one another. It might be our own hoards of gold. It might our distractions. Our jobs sometimes—notice Silas’s work is also a distraction from living life fully. Even our good things, or our not bad things, used unwisely can come at the expense of time used more wisely and more lovingly.
It might even be that we take in the loving water, but we just let it flow right through us to others without taking in what we need to be fully nourished to do God’s good work.
We know ourselves when we look within. Look for the things that make us smaller, not bigger in the ways that truly matter. The ways in which we are using our resources to limit us instead of expand us.
We are all blessed by the fullness of God’s Love. We are all fed by the river of God’s Blessings. Sometimes, our limitation is that we forget to look for it. We find what we seek and when we seek the dismal, we usually find the dismal. When we seek the blessings, we usually find it…in abundance.
It’s not enough to take in that abundance. It must flow and flow freely. We must trust that when we let our blessings flow, we give hope and love to another, and MORE will come to us. We must have faith that God’s overflowing love is not limited, but limitless. There is enough for us. There is enough for beyond us. Our work is to be sure we let the flow come into us and let it flow continually beyond us.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 