A while back, I was privileged to spend a day touring the Caribbean island of Grand Turk. It wasn’t your typical tourist experience. Grand Turk is, even by island standards, tiny; less than seven square miles. And, like many islands, it has a desert climate: usable water doesn’t come from the ocean; it comes from the sky. I didn’t expect there would be much to see on such a small, dry piece of land.
I was wrong.
There were quite a few surprises, that day. First, no matter where we went, the ocean was never out of our sight. At some points, I could see ocean in all directions. I’ve never experienced that while on land; only when aboard a ship.
Also everywhere: donkeys. By law, they can wander wherever they please. And that’s the reason each home has a short wall around the property. We drove by one house and saw what happens when someone fails to close the gate: a yard full of donkeys nibbling the flowers and “mowing” the lawn!
And then, we discovered the White Gold.
From the 1660’s, the economic mainstay of the Turks, particularly Grand Turk and Salt Cay, was the production of what came to be called “White Gold.”
Or, as we say it ... salt.
Originally, Bermudans sailed to Grand Turk and used the natural action of the ocean to produce this commodity. The incoming tide would cover low lying flats with water. Then, when the tide went out, the sun dried what was left into a super-salty brine. This was raked (by hand!) and moved by donkey cart to a higher ground for further drying.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, this location was the greatest producer of salt in the Americas.
Today, though, all of that is done. Industrialization and modernization have changed the salt industry, irrevocably. Oh, you could still produce salt the natural way. But the economies of scale have eliminated it as an economic engine for the Turks and Caicos.
What’s left —the remnants of those old processes— are flat, salt-saturated, patches ... dead land where nothing grows. Only those that are daily replenished by ocean water have any real plant growth. The inland spots just don’t have the nutrients to sustain edible plants.
And that brings me to this week’s Jeremiah passage. He urges his readers to place their trust in God so they can be like “a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
He contrasts this lovely situation with what befalls those who place their trust in anyone or anything other than God, declaring, “They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Now that I’ve seen some salt land with my own eyes, I can assure you, choosing to be the tree by the stream is a much better option ... even in an island paradise.
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PHOTO OF SALT CAY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/white-gold-how-salt-made-and-unmade-the-turks-and-caicos-islands-161576195/
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 17, 2019)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=112
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
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Friday mornings are a high point! Join us for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast at 8:00. We still meet at the Waco “Egg and I” restaurant. Food, fellowship, scripture, prayer, and some of the funniest stuff you’ve ever heard. It really is an hour like no other.
Blessings,
Steve
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