I'm in Africa

I'm in Africa this month: www.barbinafrica.blogspot.com

More river adventures...

Back on July 19th (see earlier in this blog) I wrote about two of our river adventures during the early part of July.  One week, we headed east and I went river trekking in the Río Chillar, taking Nelson with me, as he's the most athletic of the four dogs. For our outing day the following week, I took Nelson and Buba and we headed westwards, to the Río Verde, where we were able to swim at one of my favourite spots, the Charco del Canalón.

For our third river adventure, last week, we headed north, high into the. Snowy Mountains (Sierra de las Nieves) to the Río Turón. Because it's so high up in the mountains, the Turón has water all year round, so there are lots of little pools along the way and there are several deeper swimming spots where "diques" - old stone dams - have been built along the course of the river in the past.

This time I took three of the dogs with me (Bonnie the chihuahua came too) and we all had a refreshing swim in the cool mountain waters of the river.  The original plan was to walk to two or more of the dams, but the other dog owners advised that there wouldn't be enough shade along the way, so we went to a more forested area and had a walk along the shallows of the river instead. The dogs had fun, as you can see in the video.

Our very last river adventure of July was today and was probably the most "adventurous" of all. Although it was a shorter route than most of the others, it involved a level of canyoning that meant you had to clamber over enormous rocks and swim along some stretches of the river where it was too deep to walk. For this reason, Nelson was my only canine companion again for that trip today.

Although it was a little more challenging than I'd expected, it was stunning - a once in a lifetime experience. Some parts of it were so deep in the canyon that they were like caves or tunnels made of rock; sometimes there were tiny waterfalls trickling down on top of you as you swam. There were unusual shapes and patterns in the rocks, almost like stalactites in places.

On the advice of people who'd been there before, we parked at the bottom end of the canyon and, instead of walking up the main road to the town of Benahavís, we crossed the wooden footbridge and made our way up the canyon by walking in some "acequias" - irrigation channels that run parallel to the river, but high up above it. 

Once we reached the little town, we made our way to the Charco de las Mozas, a famous pool where people jump from very high rocks into very deep water. That's the starting point for the descent of the river, and from that point onwards we were climbing, walking and swimming for the next two hours, until we came to the end of the canyon and the river was edged by kind of a stony beach, where families had already gathered for a day of swimming and picnicking.

After we'd eaten our sandwich and changed out of our wet clothes and shoes, we did a short hike that had been mapped out and signposted by the town council. This one also followed the path of acequias, but the town had conveniently installed metal walkways on top of them at points where there was no room to walk next to them. So we didn't need to do any more walking in water; it was all very pleasant and "civilised."

I joke about our super-chihuahua, Bonnie, but Nelson is the real super hero. He coped admirably today with our canyoning triathlon (climbing, walking and swimming) and even needed to do a bit of abseiling when a man helped him down a particularly high part near the end. (I'm told that there used to be a knotted rope there to help canyoners in the past, but it's long gone and so you had to fling yourself down a two metre rock slide, right in the path of a cascading waterfall. Nelson was a bit reluctant to hurl himself into the void and so someone kindly helped him down.)  He went wild with joy when we reached the end of the route and a Belgian family was there with a dog about his size. The two of them splashed around for ages. But no sooner did we have our feet on dry ground than Nelson was ready for action again; he seemed to thoroughly enjoy the hiking trail and one final dip in the river. 

It's been so much fun to take one or more dogs with me on these river trips during July. As I don't particularly "go on holiday" in summer like many people do, one of my goals for my pre-outreach months this year was to set aside one day every week for something touristy or fun - visiting a new town in the region or embarking on a new experience, like these four river trips with the dogs. It's been thoroughly enjoyable.

What for...?

Even if you haven't been reading in the book of Exodus lately, as I have, you can probably easily answer the question: what did Moses ask Pharaoh to do for the Egyptians?

Everyone knows that famous phrase, "Let my people go!" even if they've never read it in the Bible, but have only seen it in a Hollywood movie.

A not so obvious question, however, might be: What for? 
Why did Moses ask Pharaoh to release all the Hebrew slaves?

We tend to focus on the first half of those verses and completely ignore the second half. We know what the people wanted to be freed from (slavery and oppression) but we forget about what they were to be freed for.

In fact, what Moses actually said every time he spoke to Pharaoh, or what God said through him, was, "Let my people go.... so that they can worship me." (Check it out in Ex 7: 16, Ex 8: 1 & 20, Ex 9: 1 & 13... and all the other times that Moses appears before Pharaoh.) There was a reason for the Exodus. It wasn't only so that the people could be free of slavery and mistreatment (even though that was an admirable outcome in itself.) It was also so that they could be free to worship their God and occupy the land that He had promised them.

We can make a similar mistake as Christians. Often we focus on what we have been saved from (sin and death and hell) but we forget to pay attention to what we have been saved for: a lifetime of intimate friendship with God as we serve and follow Him. We rightly give testimonies of what we have been freed from (alcohol, depression, destructive habits...) but we don't always remember to invest our energy in the things we've been set free to do: worship God, share Him with unbelievers, become more and more like Jesus...

Yes, it's good to express our gratitude to God for what He has freed us from; but let's also take time to understand and enter into what He has freed us for.

When I drag my heels... the importance of prompt obedience

An interesting question struck me this month during my reading in Exodus.

We know that, in Genesis 15: 13, God spoke to Abraham and warned him that the Hebrews would live in a foreign land for 400 years, and then He would bring them out of there and take them to a "promised land" of their own. Later, in Exodus 12: 40, we read that the Israelites left Egypt on the very last night of the 430th year.

So my question is this: When God told Abraham 400 years, was that just an approximation, rather than an exact number? Or did God really want to see them set free in the 400th year, and the extra 30 years came about because Moses messed up and "wasted" several decades working as a shepherd in Midian?

If Moses hadn't tried to do things in his own strength, killing a man and then fleeing in fear, perhaps the Exodus would have happened thirty years sooner.

It's a sobering thought to realise that my disobedience or delayed obedience has the power to throw God's plan off track. Yes, He is all-powerful, but God never forces someone to do something against their will. Sometimes, when we refuse to obey, He finds someone else to do the task instead. But at other times, He allows Himself to be limited by our reluctance and waits patiently until we come to the point of making the right choice.

Where might I, or you, be delaying God's purposes today?

People of courage and when it's important to be disobedient

During the month of July, I've been reading every morning in the book of Exodus. As you know, it's the story of Moses and the people of Israel as they are freed from centuries of slavery and oppression in Egypt.

Right in Exodus chapter 1, there was a small verse that stood out for me and seemed to bring a challenge relevant to the world we live in today. It's at the point where the Pharaoh has ordered that all Hebrew baby boys are to be killed at birth, and in vs 17 we find the first example of civil disobedience in the Bible. It says that, because the Hebrew midwives respected God more than they respected the Egyptian king, they refused to obey this order from their government. It meant that they were risking punishment, maybe even risking their lives, but they cared more about what God thought than about what people thought.

I've believed for some years now, that we're coming to a time in history where this sort of courage is going to be needed again. We live in a world where governments are increasingly passing laws that are hostile and opposed to the laws of God. A Scottish schoolboy was recently suspended after an argument with his teacher; the boy insisted that it was unscientific to claim that there are more than two genders, while his school teacher said that that kind of talk was not allowed in school, because there are "many different gender options." Two pre-teens in England have been suspended after requesting permission to be excluded from a class about same sex marriage. A woman in Canada was taken to court for "hate talk" because she objected to transgender teenagers (boys who "identified" as girls) being allowed to use the same bathrooms and changing rooms as her twelve year old daughter.

The LGBTQ agenda is advancing so aggressively at the moment, that the "politically correct" thing to do is to show public support. Ikea, long known for their iconic blue shopping bags, recently released a "rainbow" bag in order to show their support for the gay and transgender community. Sainsbury's recently hung rainbow coloured banners in their supermarkets in order to proclaim a similar message. 

We're coming into a time when not publicly embracing this agenda will require us to break laws and risk criminal prosecution. This is just one of the public issues we face in today's world, but it's one of the most aggressive ones at the moment.

The church in the western world has led a relatively sheltered life for centuries, free from major forms of persecution. But the tides are turning and our world is increasingly anti-Christian. We will need to be people of love, but also people of courage like those midwives in that very first chapter of Exodus.

River trekking adventures

It's that time of year where hot summer temperatures send people in search of ways to cool off and be refreshed. For many people, that means flocking to the beaches that Spain is so famous for. For others, seeking to avoid the tourist trap, it means finding lakes and rivers where you can go for a quick dip.

There are lots of rivers in southern Spain and they're just beautiful in winter when they're being constantly fed by snow and rain. In summer, however, almost all of our rivers are completely dry. (See the blog post before this one for an explanation of that.) If you want to find a river that still has water in it, you need to head to a place where the mountains are pretty close to the sea and the river is therefore quite close to its source.

I'm not much of a beach person, and I don't have access to a swimming pool, so in summer I try to make room for a day every week where I can go on a "wild swimming" outing to a nearby lake or river. This month I've enjoyed two river adventures in the sierras that are so close to the Costa del Sol.

Last week I took Nelson with me, and we drove eastwards along the coast to the little town of Nerja and the Río Chillar. Over a decade of living in Spain, I'd heard a lot of talk about the famous Chillar River Walk, where you walk all the way up the river, in ankle deep or calf deep water, traversing narrow canyons and encountering numerous little waterfalls as the river tumbles its way down from the Sierra Tejeda. I'd always assumed that this was a walk I wouldn't be able to do - because of the challenges I have with arthritis... but a dog-walking friend had been telling me about it recently and so I decided just to go and check it out, even if I was only able to do a small part of the route.

It turned out to be one of the most fun things I've done since livng in Spain. Because the river is meandering through deep gorges, there was no climbing involved to put strain on my lungs... and because you're walking in cold water, you don't get sore or sweaty feet. The landscape was stunningly beautiful and Nelson was the perfect dog for the adventure: he never got tired of running and splashing around in the water as we made our way up the river to the pools and waterfalls at the top. This was definitely an adventure not to be missed, and I'm glad I plucked up the courage to do it.

For this week's adventure, we headed westwards, to the Sierra de las Nieves and the Río Verde. It's not as well known as the Chillar, and it's deeper in most places, but you can still walk upriver in the water if you want to. However, it's not for nothing that it's called the Río Verde (the Green River.) I'd been warned that the stones of the river bed can be quite slippery with moss and algae, and I decided I wasn't going to risk any sprained ankle with outreach season just around the corner.

Where I really wanted to go, though, was a beautiful spot at the top of the river, called the Charco del Canalón, where water tumbles from the mountain into a deep pond. In fact, there are several pools at that top part of the river; some are quite shallow and others, where the river passes through a rocky channel, are as much as a couple of metres deep.

We'd been there last summer, but without any canine companions in tow. This year, I took Buba and Nelson with me for the day trip. They thoroughly enjoyed the walk through the forest and, as you can see in the video, they spent a whole hour splashing and swimming in the pools of the river. (I swam too, but I'm not in the video.) Then, we hiked back to the car again and drove down the mountain a little bit to the town of Istán, where we took another walk along the irrigation channels that come from the source of another river, the Río Molinos.

All in all, we had two very enjoyable days of river adventures.

For next week, I'm hoping it might be possible for us to head to the Guadalmina River Canyon, a spot where you actually have to swim for much of the short route between the high rocky walls. I saw it last year when I was driving back from Gibraltar, but I was alone and didn't have the right gear with me for the descent. (You need to carry your towel and clothes/shoes in a waterproof bag, so that you can get dressed again when you reach the other end.) I haven't yet found others who'd be willing or available to go there next week (some of my friends already did it fairly recently) so I'm still asking around. It would be a fitting third episode to our river adventures this summer.

Spring water or cistern water... ?

As summer temperatures soar in southern Spain, you begin to notice that every river you see, every arroyo that passes under your motorway bridge, is completely dry. There's a huge network of rivers in Andalucía, but at this time of year they are nothing more than dry, sandy or pebbly river beds. One politician has described them as "wounds" across the face of the region.

The reason, you see, is that the government has built a series of strategically placed dams to gather the water and protect us from drought in the endlessly dry summer months. These dams create beautiful lakes (in the above photo, I'm swimming near the Agujero dam in Málaga) and they mean that we always have sufficient supply of drinking water.... but it also results in those dozens of dry river beds across the landscape. 

When there are no constantly flowing sources of water, like we see in winter, it means that wildlife (notably the deer) need to wander far in search of a place to drink. I've seen quite a few deer recently in the forest close to where I live. I was surprised to see them so close to the town, and realised it's because there are almost no water sources in the Sierra de Mijas. It's a living illustration of Psalm 42 vs 1: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for You, the Living God. Fortunately, the deer are usually in the mountain regions, where there are streams that flow all year, because of the snow-melt that births the rivers in the sierras. Most of us, however, are drinking water from reservoirs and not from flowing springs.

It reminds me of a Bible verse that made an impact on me when I was still a young Christian. In Jeremiah 2: 13, God reproaches His people for two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, cracked cisterns that can no longer hold water.

Cisterns are not a bad thing. Like our Spanish "lakes," they make sure that you have a supply of drinking water available - water that at one point in the past was fresh and flowing. God certainly isn't against our building a storehouse of insights and understanding that He has given to us over years of reading and meditating on His Word. But when I first read that verse as a young believer, I realised it was warning me of a danger we could so easily fall into: the danger of depending on "old revelation" and our accumulated knowledge, instead of pushing in daily to receive fresh, life-giving revelation from God Himself. As the Hebrews in the desert discovered: old manna won't last; we need a fresh source on a regular basis.

I am thankful for the dozens of journals that I have filled over decades of spending time daily with the Lord... but I don't want the landscape of my life to be scattered with dry river beds. I want to be able to proclaim with the singers at the end of Psalm 87: all of my springs/sources are in You.