Go to the River

But I will trust in You, Lord; I say, “You are my God.”
The course of my life is in your power.
(Psalm 31:14, 15a HCSB)

Go to the river and see it.
Go to the river and hear it.
It moves.

It slides by in deep delta silence or it roars by, crashing through the rocky gorge. Go to the river. Watch and listen.

At sundown no one throws a switch and sends the crowds home.
No sound tech pulls a fader down to finally relieve the weary amps and speakers of their ceaseless duty.

Tomorrow morning, no workers will come early to start up the river again before the day’s crowds arrive.
There is no hidden machinery to be oiled and cleaned and repaired.

Go to the river anytime, crowd or no crowd, dawn, dusk or noon, holiday or workday, summer or winter and you will see. Even beneath the ice, the river flows.

Go to the river and you will hear. The water flows in silence where it is deep and in
celebratory song where the rocks squeeze its shallow bed. Its course is traced by the finger of God.

Its power is His loving plan, an inexorable will that will carry me downstream if I choose
to wade far enough into the water.

And so is my life.

No committees meet.
No machinery whirs.
No illusion gleams when some switch is thrown.
Like the river, rushing through the mountains or easing through the delta, my course is in His hands.

January 23, 2007, Springfield, VA