UP A CREEK
Everything is meaningless, “says the Teacher, “utterly meaningless! Ecclesiastes 1:2
The wisest man who ever lived begins his treatise with that demoralizing thunderclap!
The life cycle of the Chinook salmon fits in seamlessly with Solomon’s examples of frustratingly monotonous repetitions of life. This magnificent fish begins life in a gravelly streambed to journey down the river to spend its life in the ocean only to fight its way back up the same stream to the same gravel bed to produce the next generation who does it all over again.
In the song, “River of Dreams”, Billy Joel explains a hauntingly frustrating search for something beyond the merry-go-round that he can never define…
In the middle of the night – I go walking in my sleep
from the mountains of faith to the river so deep
I must be looking for something- something sacred I lost
but the river is wide and it’s so hard to cross….
I’m not sure about a life after this-God knows I’ve never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire I wade into the river that is running to the promised land
We all end in the ocean-we all start in the streams
we’re all carried along by the river of dreams- in the middle of the night.
If Jesus’ tomb were still occupied life on earth would be pretty bleak and ill defined.
But, he triumphed over death and the cycle of life so we have a promise infinitely greater than a vague hope of being ultimately washed down the river to a promised land. Jesus put it this way… everyone who drinks this (earthly) water will become thirsty again (cycle of thirst), but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. John 4:13-14
INVENTORY of “UP A CREEK” (steel salmon) • 2012
36” antique bolt cutter |
Spine |
Fabricated one of a kind.
55" H x 20" L
Hillsboro, Oregon
