Strange name for a blogpost? Perhaps. Beulah is one of those unique Bible names, used just once to make a particular point; I happened to come across it again a couple days ago, and it struck me in a way it had not before. Stick with me for a bit.
Somewhere in my early childhood, my family knew an older woman by that name, though I cannot recall anything further than that. Thus my oldest memories are that it was a woman’s name. Then while working the mailroom in our denominational publishing house during grad school, I found it was the name of one of our churches in California. Strange name for a church, I thought, a woman’s name. Must have been quite a lady. Just kidding, but I obviously did not recall the Bible verse or know the meaning at the time.
A post-exilic text from the Prophet Isaiah, it was written several hundred years prior to the birth of Jesus Christ, intended to give encouragement to the long-oppressed and exiled people of Israel, and it reads thus: “You shall no more be called Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate. But you shall be called My Delight Is In Her, and your land Beulah (that is, married) [Isaiah 62:4].”
A land called Married. Hmmm…
The term ‘Beulah Land’ was used by John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress. It referred to a city of incredible peace found as one approached the end of the Christian journey, near the border of the Celestial City. From Beulah Land, one could begin to sense the beauties and character of Heaven itself. The term and its heaven themes were also picked up by several gospel hymn writers of the 19th Century, including Fanny Crosby (see hymn lyrics here).
But a land called Married. Just think on that a bit…
Now, of course, much political dispute and bitter conflict takes place over ‘possession’ of that (hardly) peaceful Beulah land this past century, the land of Israel. Whose land is it? Who was there first? Has God metaphysically granted it as a physical possession? To whom? Who gains by right of conquest? Which conquest? Can two hotheaded cultures possibly share it, especially when some subcultures within are bent on the utter destruction of the other? What would need to happen for that sharing, or at least coexisting, to take place? It is perhaps the worst conundrum on the face of the planet, and often seems an intractable dilemma. Perhaps it is because both groups feel married to the land. And I don’t think that is how the text is to be understood anyway.
But stay there for a moment in a different way. What is marriage after all? And this is where my mind has gone these last couple of days since running across the Biblical text again. A different nuance of the ‘married to the land’ concept keeps occurring to me, not one of possessiveness or control, but one of sacrifice, perhaps even one that could help us all become better stewards of God’s creation.
Gail and I just celebrated our 48th anniversary this month. We learned long ago that some of the keys to a healthy marriage – with the most important being welcoming God at the center of our relationship – are to build each other up, to affirm each other and cherish one another, committing ourselves every single day to honor and bless the other rather than to take advantage of or exploit, certainly not to hurt. A marriage partner is not to be used (let alone abused) for one’s sole advantage.
What if our relationship to the land was similar? What if we saw ourselves as married to the land in this way? What if we also then saw land as not simply to be used (and certainly not abused), not to be exploited, but rather tenderly cared for, caressed, loved, honored? Again, what if our relationship to the land was not about possession but sacrifice? Like a very REAL relationship? What could be different? And of course as I muse on this, I think about the two little acres Gail and I are blessed to ‘own’ on this terrestrial orb (see Psalm 24:1), an acre plus in the northwoods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and another on Whidbey Island in Washington. Not a day goes by that we don’t feel gratitude for these small parcels. We love them. We are intimate with them. We know every nook and cranny, every contour, every plant and animal (OK, at least the majority), practically every single tree or rotting log on them. And we would never want them to be anything other than what they are, a simple and natural place for an abode. Far be it from us to hurt them. And it is a true truth that love is always the first step to fully caring for something, caring for it in a way that IT needs, not that WE need (though I am glad that what our two acres need and what we need are not in conflict with each other).
This is vastly closer to an indigenous philosophy of the land than is the typical possession/consumption/exploitation model to which most of the world has become accustomed (which is not only Western, by the way). It seems that indigenous persons the world over held (and in some places, still hold) to a philosophy of a literal relationship with the land, going so far as to see the land and everything upon it as a relative. I like that very much.
Come to find out that the church named Beulah was adjacent to some of the richest and most fertile farmland of California’s amazing Central Valley, which makes me wonder if its founders had a line on this ‘married to the land’ idea long ago. What beauty could occur (and what healing might transpire) if we loved the land as if we were married to it?
~~ RGM, August 20, 2024
