From Today's Readings

“When the server is ready, the service appears.”

The Sea of Galilee

and the Dead Sea

are made of the same water.

It flows down, clear and cool,

from the heights of Hermon

and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon.

The Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it,

for the Sea of Galilee has an outlet.

It gets to give.

It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again

to fertilize the Jordan plain.

But the Dead Sea

with the same water makes horror.

For the Dead Sea has no outlet.

It gets to keep.

-Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Service (1920)

Quoted in Peter McWilliam’s Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School — But Didn’t

(Full book available for free on author’s website)