Old Man River

Early this morning I had a chance to spend some time on the riverfront of the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  Some friends are having surgery today at a hospital there.  I went to pray with them before surgeries started, and I decided to spend my morning devotional time on the banks of Old Man River.   It was a glorious, bright morning; unusually cool for the blistering hot and dry summer we've been having in the Midwest.   People who know me know that I pretty much define life itself in and around rivers.  I can turn a river into a metaphor, a principle, or a sermon ad nauseum.  This morning was no exception.

We're experiencing drought, as is much of the country.  The Mississippi is as low as anyone can remember.  I watched two tugboat/barge assemblies struggle to get past each other in the now narrow main channel.  Still, the river moves with resolute determination.  Old Man River might look slow and lethargic from a bridge, but he's moving pretty fast when  you stand at the riverbank.  Drought or flood stage, the river perseveres.  That's exactly the nature of God.  We experience the droughts or flood stages of life and assume God has cut and run.  In fact, God never yields in determination to reach lost hearts, to give hope to the hopeless, to embrace the lonely, to shatter injustice, to change lives, and to transform the world.  The Mississippi never relents.  Neither does God.

That's says something about those of us who would be followers of Jesus as well.  We are to have the same resolute perseverance.  God is determined on our behalf, even to the point of dying on a cross.  A world in need of hope and transformation needs a Body of Christ with that kind of determination.  Too often we let our discipleship become like a pond.  When life is good, and blessings fall like steady rain showers, we're full to overflowing, and we're all about being happy servants of Jesus.  But when life becomes like the scorching sun and searing dry wind of a drought, and we let our spirit dry up.   We wait on practicing spiritual disciplines, on growing in Christ, on serving others, and on witnessing to our faith until we feel full of the rain of blessings again.  We're called to be like a river.  Sometimes there will be drought, sometimes there will be flood stage, and sometimes it will just be steady.  Keep moving.  Move with resolute determination, just like the Mississippi and just like our God.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.