The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord;
he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.
Proverbs 21:1
Fun river to run," she said.
Class 5 rapids is what she means
Weave through the boulders in one thin line
No room to eddy-out between
A 20-foot high falling wall
You ride it down like easy fun
What's the trick to falls that tall?
How do you do the things you've done?
"You Make It Look Easy"
David Wilcox
At church a few weeks ago, we spent some time talking about decisions. How do we make the important decisions in our lives and what do those choices bring into or take from our lives? If each choice we make represents a step on the journey of our lives, in what direction are our choices taking us? Do they bring us more joy, more passion, more awakening to our purpose, more love, more fulfillment, more life! Or do they bring us more dissonance, more unsettled restlessness, more discontent, more frustration, more anxiety, more disconnectedness, the list goes on but you get the idea. In sum, do the choices we make bring life or do they bring death?
I remember an afternoon from several years ago spent alone in the NC mountains along the edge of small mountain stream. It was one of those early spring days when you remember how it felt to be a child abandoned to the pursuit of important pointlessness. For me on this particular day, it took the form of a fun game throwing yellow buttercups as far up stream as I could and then watching them find their way past me in reckless abandon until I lost sight of them in the distance. Well, at least most of them. Every now and then one would go to the right of a large stone that split the water in two. For those unfortunate buttercups, it landed them in a stagnant pool of water off to the side of the rapid flow. I watched these buttercups slowly float around and around in the pool. Each time they would come close to reconnecting with flowing water, I would watch them get pushed gently back into the pool. I can't tell you how long I watched this same pattern happen finding myself becoming increasingly disappointed with each lost opportunity of escape. Where the water was clean and clear flowing with white foamy urgency on one side of the stone, this pool was dark with the decay of things trapped long dead and rotting. It was hard to imagine that this bright yellow buttercup would melt into this morass. Honestly, how tragic.
Not too many months after that afternoon, I had a first hand opportunity to see how it felt to be one of those buttercups. I was back in the mountains with some friends for a day of white water rafting...tourist style, of course, as all of us knew nothing about the sport. One of the things I learned that day was regardless how hot the summer day may be, mountain water runs cold as ice. The other thing I learned were some very rudimentary paddling skills along with a new awareness of the potential hazards inherent in the trip. There are no brakes and there isn't a steering wheel. There is no engine to cut or sail to let out. This is a go-with-the-flow kind of adventure and you better figure out how to make peace with the power that lifts you up and carries you forward, because there is no taming it and there is certainly no controlling it. But on the other side of abandon and surrender was a ride that only nature could give you. It was amazing. Just from the small glimpse I got that day, I can understand why people become such enthusiasts of the sport.
The images from these two days have stayed with me for a long time. To me, they represent the underlying reality of many of the decisions I have before me. Do I choose to stay in the flow of the river or do I choose to sideline myself in murky water. The times in my life when I have been the most alive and the most connected with that sense of "THIS is what I was created for" have been those times that I have surrendered my need to control and allowed myself to be swept up in God's will. It has been when I have fought to keep my boat in the middle of that flow. I think the reason my heart longed so much for that buttercup to find its way into the flow of that river was because I remember what it felt like to be trapped in dead waters. The flow of my life and results of choices I made landed me in a place that I knew would end in death. Death of hope. Death of joy. Death of purpose. And I was powerless to change the never-ending, circling flow that kept me trapped. But my greatest joy came from the realization that God could do what I could not. God sent His son to take my place in the muck and mire of that trap and I was plucked up and placed in the flow of living water racing with purpose on the watercourse He designed.
When we allow God to take us on this adventure with our hands in the raft, completely given over to the ride, no room to eddy-out, He makes the impossible possible. When we yield ourselves in this way, He can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. You will look in from the outside and think it all just looks so easy and effortless, and in one sense, you are right. It is a wild ride powered by a force outside of yourself that moves with power beyond anything you possess and reaches its intended destination in spite of you. But isn't one of the hardest things in the world to do is trust our very lives to the God we only see in part? Doesn't it take incredible resolve to yield our stubborn and proud hearts? Doesn't the wounded parts of our soul rebel against laying ourselves bare to His intentions?
"Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, 'Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life...." Deuteronomy 30:11-20
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
according to his power that is at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!"
Ephesians 3:20-21
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