River correspondence

in response to a friend in the Amazon basin...
The RIVER is a tremendous image. I would like to interact with you about it. It is a deeper concept than I have realized, but it is becoming more and more a focus for me. In my systematics studies I like a term I heard once but not since: epigenetic. Essentially people in systematic theology try to find systems to explain how everything fits together. What I argued was that Scripture is a mystically crooked and uneven as the most beautiful tree, the most intoxicating river. There is a trunk, a basin, from which branches come and go, but not randomly. The cryptic twists humble our modernists attempts at viewing reality in mechanistic forms. God of Creation (rivers and trees and societies) is more brilliant than us. We should be awed and seduced, not pompously describing how point 1 leads to point 2 to point 3 ad naseum. There is dynamic direction, but the river carries and directs us.

The HOPE is a city. Part of the problem in the Amazon basin is people can’t live together without using and abusing each other, so they stay small in number and get a different set of problems. Creation started in a garden and ends in a garden city. The glory of the garden is retained, but then the command to be fruitful will have been fulfilled. We will live in harmony with creation and with one another and with God. That is the good news going up the river. Rethink! God is your future. Be forgiven and relearn how you fit into his creation and his family for his glory and your good!!!