Bear with me.....as our imaginary coach bobs along the road that snakes along the 76 km shoreline of the lowest spot on earth. We look out onto the northern part of the Dead Sea, 1,373 feet below sea level. Psychologists would have loved to be with us….wow, we are on the way to see deepest depression in any part of the earth.
Depression? Well, with her sister Desparation, they are the targets we love to point all our fingers at for the way society at large is today.
And a Dead Sea? Yes, I suppose that clearly indicates that there’s nothing left. Everything has come to an end. Finished. Death, in this case, means that no fish or marine life can possibly live in this very Salty Sea, as the Hebrews call it, Yam Hamelach….. the Bahr el-Miyet of the Arabs or Devil’s Sea of the Crusaders. Yet this very death has become a novelty, a newfound lifeline as today’s tourists to Israel like us quickly find out, the sea with the marvellous quirk where everyone can float without much effort due to its high concentration of salt.Life in death. In a deep depression. Where the breath of life comes easier to you too because here the barometric pressure has 8% more oxygen than anywhere else on earth. All this in the middle of a desert…..where the stark reality of it all makes one take stock of ones perspective of life and death matters.
It strikes you how morbid a choice of words for such a well known area in the world, a place with its own particular sense of beauty. Strange contrasting elements indeed, a sea that is constantly receiving millions of gallons daily of the life giving waters from the River Jordon yet dies soon after in such a dramatic fashion…….only to live again through minerals and organic elements that are not found in any other sea or ocean, sought after for their therapeutic benefits for the human body.
But then you are whisked away by the coach to be hit by the sheer contrast of the beauty of the nature reserve of Ein Gedi, the fountain of the kid, with its sheer cliffs. Four sweet water springs flow into this reserve, also called Hazezon Tamar in the Bible because of its palm groves and dates of old.
For here “My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of Ein Gedi” (Song of Solomon 1:14). Or as the writer of Ecclesiasticus spoke of wisdom that was “exalted like a palm tree in Ein Gedi” (Ecc. 24:14).
The total and utter contrast however leaves it mark on you. You reason therefore that through sheer nature, God can also give life in the desert as well as take it. As He does in the desert of our lives. The death, desperation and depression have to give way to Him. If we are able to see it and grasp its meaning for us.
This is the place where one has to come face to face with oneself. It is a place one visits often, possibly daily, in one’s life. Problems, work, poor health. Anything that spells personal death. That causes desperation, depression.
This is the place where we have to stand up and be counted by our example. By what we stand for. In this very same wilderness of Ein gedi, David upheld the principle that the end does not justify the means (1 Samuel 24:3-21).
In yet another similar wilderness not too far away, Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would worship him (Matthew 4:1-11). Jesus refused this convenient short cut and opted, instead for the way of the cross. In the eyes of the Lord the end does not justify the means.
Yet, we are told to take heart. The prophet Ezekiel has predicted that we too would come alive again with the Lord in our life, as will the shores of the Dead Sea: “swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water that flows there makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will line the shores, from Ein Gedi to Ein Eglaim….the fish will be of many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea” (Ez. 47: 1-11).
