Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: River (08/31/06)
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TITLE: Killing Mother | Previous Challenge Entry
By Suzanne R
09/03/06 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
Your beauty is unequalled on this vast planet on which you take centre stage. From the snow capped mountains and foreboding glaciers you begin your leisurely amble to the ocean, supporting life and beauty all the way. Grains, vegetables and fruit flourish. Trees grow tall and strong, marking a meandering lifeline through deserts and plains. Children laugh as they splash in your shallows. Men contemplate life as they bob in boats on your surface, fishing nets spread below, providing for their families. Women chatter as they meet on your banks, scrubbing laundry. Lovers steal away to meet in the moonlight reflecting off your lifeblood.
How many generations have enacted their life dramas around you? Emperors, commoners, soldiers, explorers, young people, mothers, children……. You were there when we worshipped the God above all gods. Did you cry when we transitioned to man-made gods, philosophies, then to religions from other lands? According to our current ‘wisdom’, we worship nothing … life is without meaning … we are too developed to need such emotional supports.
Mother dear, how you must ache to see your children behave so foolishly.
We love you, Mother, yet we’re stealing your life.
Valiantly you struggle against the grasping clutches of your children, bravely attempting to withstand our greed. We are too many, Mother. It’s not malicious. We only take from you to meet our needs and wants. In the winter you regain for a few short months a shadow of your former strength and composure. Once again, your waters trickle into the ocean.
Modernization has led to global warming, which results in the glaciers receding. Your waters diminish. We chop down trees in order to plant more crops, but then the soil is washed away. It clogs up your arteries. We build power stations, borrowing your life’s blood to cool our equipment, only to return some of it on Tuesdays, a little the worse for wear.
You are broken, battered, pathetic. Does it look like we care? We continue to take and take and take. Your life ebbs away.
We’re trying to help, Mother.
We move the weakest off the land so as to leave more natural land near your source. We coop up in cement boxes those relocated, telling them that the modern way is better. We send planes to bomb rain clouds with pellets of carbon monoxide, forcing ‘man-made rain’ to descend. We’ve restricted access to water for our poorest, thereby trying to save your life. We are so wise.
We are developed … powerful … modern … populous. We have industry, electricity, flushing toilets and homes up high off the ground. We don’t need you there in the mountains and plains. We need you in our factories, cities and apartments. Oh yes - and we need a garbage dump for our waste.
In our cities, we spray the roads several times a day with your lifeblood to settle the dust. It isn’t convenient to get our patent leather shoes dirty. We pipe your lifeblood hundreds of kilometres from where you lie. It isn’t convenient for the wealthy to move or do without.
Your imminent death isn’t convenient for us, you know.
Progress … life … money…. What we don’t fully comprehend is that as we strangle our mother, we cut off our life source.
Brothers and sisters, prepare to die.
But what is this? A greater river is sweeping over our land. Our beloved mother shows no sign of jealousy. Although strangled groans continue to emanate from what is almost a carcass, there is a note of hope in there too.
This is not a river that our factories, power stations and high-rise homes can utilize. It does nothing to settle the dust. It does not originate in the high mountains to the west. It flows from amongst us … the chosen of this land’s children … and from others beyond our vast borders. Its origins are deeper yet. It flows from the source of Life Himself.
Its rushing water pulsates with an ancient rhythm, resonating with the deepest part of our beings … it is a rhythm which beats with life itself. This river is even more ancient than our great Mother.
Give us water.
Give us running water, living water. River of life, flow over our great land. Restore us.
Mother, now we understand your anticipation. We wait with you, watching, confident, eager and desperate for our Saviour to return and set the world aright.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
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Overall, it was well written - and made its point quite clearly.
God bless,
Kevin
God bless you as you continue to offer your gifts and talents to the Lord in such a wonderful way! Very, very well done!