While I'm collecting the necessary ingredients for my next study, I found this article I thought I'd share with you. Your positive input as always is welcome!
--------------------------
SWEET WATER
James 3:10,11 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
-------------------
Ogac Lake is located on the upper end of Frosbisher Bay on Baffin Island in Arctic Canada. Ogac Lake contains both freshwater and saltwater. The fresh water, or sweetwater, stays on top while the heavier saltwater sinks to the bottom.
Two processes work to keep the layers from mixing. First, melting snow from the two-thousand-foot mountains surrounding the lake supplies it with sweetwater. The sweetwater flows along on top of the saltwater until it reaches a river, only a hundred yards long, that empties into the bay. Second, Frosbisher Bay has some of the highest tides in the world. When these tides are particularly high, the river flows backwards, carrying saltwater upstream and into the lake. The newly deposited saltwater sinks to the bottom and replenishes any salt that might have been carried off by the freshwater flowing into the river.
In the Eskimo language, Ogac Lake means "Cod Lake." Cod are saltwater fish, and for centuries the Eskimos relied on them as a major food source. Until the lake's saltwater layer was discovered, no one understood how cod lived there. Because the saltwater level does not rise enough to allow the fish to find the river, they have been trapped in the lake for hundreds of years.
Ogac Lake with both freshwater, which is "sweet," and saltwater, which is "bitter," reminds of today's text. It is not uncommon for humans to treat one person or group of persons in the sweetest manner imaginable, while treating another person or group of persons in just the opposite way. According to our text, we should not behave this way.
The solution to the problem is found further along in the same chapter of James 3:17 which says: "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."
Let's keep this in mind, as we deal with our fellow men and women here at Adlandpro!