Congaree River looking north from the Blossom Street Bridge, Columbia, SC. We live at the east end of the Gervais Street Bridge seen in the distance.
Rivers have always had an emotional hold on me. Maybe it started when I was a kid in an old wooden boat on river shoals during the night with my granddaddy or uncle checking a trotline for catfish surrounded by the dark and the sounds of the river moving over rocks and rubbing against the boat. It’s enough to get a kid’s adrenalin flowing.
With their constant movement and varying depths and currents, rivers are like the passing of time and like life experiences. I can throw out an anchor and stay in one spot, but the river, or life, will still keep delivering new challenges from upstream. I can cut loose and just flow with the river and try to be prepared to deal with the surprises around each new bend. Or I can manage and navigate the river, adding speed in the slow spots and steering to the safer, or the most dangerous, passages through rapids, keeping the boat properly aligned. I can burn a lot of gas or calories moving upstream to enjoy the float back down later. Or I can just sit on the bank and watch everything go by though, even then, there is the danger of flood waters.
There is a cleansing aspect to rivers. They can become filthy with human or industrial waste, but, leave them alone for a time, and they clean themselves. Maybe that is why the preference in the early church was for baptism in “living” or moving waters and why Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan.
A lot of stuff is readily visible on the surface of a river, but underneath are dark mysteries, things from the past and living creatures of various types and sizes. Do I stay on the bank or float enclosed in the safety of the boat, or do I take a swim or do some wading? I can spend my time speculating about such things as how long it will take for a single molecule of water passing by to come this way again. Or I can catch a catfish and have it for breakfast the next morning. The possibilities are limitless.
I live overlooking the Congaree River in Columbia, SC. I can put a boat in and go a few miles south and see the same view that Catawba Indians floating the river five hundred years ago would have seen, the only man-made items in sight being the boat I am sitting in and its contents. And right in the city, I can walk our dog by the river and listen to its calming gurgling whisper.
The incredible timelessness and infinity and variability of a good river are insignificant compared to the attributes of God, but, perhaps observing and experiencing rivers can give us a glimpse of The Creator.
Darryl: I share your love of rivers. That post is beautiful and so true: "I can throw out an anchor and stay in one spot, but the river, or life, will still keep delivering new challenges from upstream. I can cut loose and just flow with the river and try to be prepared to deal with the surprises around each new bend. Or I can manage and navigate the river, adding speed in the slow spots and steering to the safer passages through rapids, keeping the boat properly aligned. I can burn a lot of gas or calories moving upstream to enjoy the float back down later. Or I can just sit on the bank and watch everything go by though, even then, there is the danger of flood waters."