Those of my gallant readers who have spent time mooching about in central Asia with a back-pack or have spent youthful years lapping up geography will know the sad and disconcerting story of the Aral Sea. At one time it was the fourth largest lake in the world with water covering 26,000 square miles. Then it began drying up. Two rivers changed their courses and now what was a thriving fishing industry with trawlers working in an inland sea there is a desert. All that is left of the inland sea is a puddle.
To the east is another vast mass of fresh water – Lake Balkal. This has a different story altogether. It is the world’s largest mass of surface fresh water with a maximum depth of a mile. And it contains 22 per cent of the world’s surface fresh water.
You won t need me to remind you that, given the centuries of difference and the distant location of these two lakes, they might well have figured in the story told by Jesus that we have at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew seven).
The poet Alexander Pope picked up the point. He may have had in mind the contrast between the man building on a rock and the man building on sand. He urged his readers to drink deep. Perhaps with 1 Corinthians 3 in mind Pope said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Pope was also interested in what makes a man capable of true judgment. Generous converse, listening to others, readiness to praise, with reason in his outlook are some of the considerations. He ends with the word: not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.’
The Aral Sea was once an extensive lake not far from the Caspian. Today it is a desert with rusting hulks everywhere. It suffered from a diversion of rivers that had kept up its water-level but its main problem was its lack of depth. A few hundred miles away is another lake – Baikal. Who knows? Jesus might well have told a story about two lakes rather than two houses.
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