Count Your Blessings #80 – Rivers in Swell

If you read this post regularly you have probably picked up that I get a lot of inspiration from my regular walks before work. Working from home, as I do, I find it’s very important to get my body to wake-up before I get to work. It would be very easy to be really lazy and not move beyond the bounds of the house but that would eventually drive me crazy.

Taking the daily walk wakes my body and my brain.

(This is where I walk most of the time)

Right down the middle of this walk run a couple of brooks, one of them is Savick Brook which travels all the way across Preston and eventually becomes the new Ribble Link Canal.

Today these two brooks had been swelled by the last few days (and nights) of rain.

I love to sit and watch rivers like this. I like sleepy river too, but there is something far more interesting about rivers that are gushing. There’s something mysterious about the chocolate brown water rushing by. What is it carrying in the darkness? What will it have washed way when it subsides?

As a child we went on holiday to Scotland – at least I think it was Scotland. I am not renown for my ability to remember childhood events. The cottage we were staying in was right next to a river. There was also a stone bridge carry a track to a farm beyond the river. I have had many wonderful holidays in Scotland where the weather was very kind to us. On this occasion it rained for days, it tipped it down.

At the start of the holiday we could see trout in the river. As the week went on the river at the back of the cottage swelled. The clear water that let us see trout turned into a brown soup carrying sand, silt, branches and all sorts of other debris. We wondered how the trout were surviving in all the turmoil.

The stone bridge that had looked so immovable before started to take the strain of everything being thrown at it. The river became wider than the archway, whirlpools formed at the edges. We watched as branches got sucked into the whirlpools, being spat out further down the river.

I have glass of water sitting by me as I write. It looks all peaceful and calming. Combine it with profusion of water then tip it down a hillside and the effect is quite different.

At the weekend we were on holiday in Derbyshire and went to Dovedale. Dovedale is the remnant of a huge cavern which has long since collapsed, but all the signs are still there to be seen. Jonathan and I went up to some of the caves and archways. It was great especially because it was a little precarious at times. Masses of rock, washed away by a river.

The Message uses the picture of a river overflowing its banks to represent some of the words of Jesus:

“When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there’s no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you’ll be full of joy, and it will be a joy no one can rob from you. You’ll no longer be so full of questions.

“This is what I want you to do: Ask the Father for whatever is in keeping with the things I’ve revealed to you. Ask in my name, according to my will, and he’ll most certainly give it to you. Your joy will be a river overflowing its banks!

“I’ve used figures of speech in telling you these things. Soon I’ll drop the figures and tell you about the Father in plain language. Then you can make your requests directly to him in relation to this life I’ve revealed to you. I won’t continue making requests of the Father on your behalf. I won’t need to. Because you’ve gone out on a limb, committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came directly from the Father, the Father loves you directly. First, I left the Father and arrived in the world; now I leave the world and travel to the Father.”

Luke 16

Our joy at being able to talk directly with God (because that is what he was talking about) will bring joy that will be like a river overflowing its banks! Now that is a powerful joy indeed.