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The River ...

A while ago I came to the realization that life is kind of like a boat traveling in a river.  The flow of the river is like the pull of what a lot of people see as "normal" - drama, hurt, hate, anger and ultimately hopelessness. Look at the media around us and the pull is obvious.  Many songs and shows are dealing with the pain and hurt of life and their ultimate conclusion is to feel good as often as you can to escape the pain.  That is the flow of life without God, sitting in a boat which is slowly headed to an uncertain physical and spiritual future.  God's ways as explained in the Bible require rowing upstream - forgiveness, a clear conscience, loving others, and letting go of what is hurting us and those around us. 

The River ... a man was sitting in his life-boat floating idly downstream when he was passed by a woman rowing upstream, he did not see her coming because life-boats face upstream as they travel downstream. As the woman slowly came into his vision the man yelled out to her, "Why are you using your steer sticks to go upstream? No one else is!" 

The woman answered  "I heard for years that the river eventually flows over falls, but I did not believe the story.  I was with a group of downstreamers who believed that the falls story was made up and we deliberately tried to go downstream as quickly as possible by using our steer sticks to paddle. 

Sometimes it was a thrill but also ran into a lot of problems, and we noticed that our boats were slowly taking on water. One day I was sure I heard the falls ahead, I remembered that an upstreamer told me that the steer sticks are actually called oars, and the boatmaker had given them to us to enable us to row upstream toward the source." 

The man responded, "I'm not a downstreamer, I'm just floating.  I know that they are living dangerously but I'm just staying in the same place." 

As she was rowing away the woman replied, "we are either headed toward the falls or headed toward the source, not rowing is a choice to float toward the falls." 

"Put off your old self,
which belongs to your former manner of life
 and is corrupt through deceitful desires,

and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self,

created after the likeness of God
in true righteousness and holiness." 
Ephesians 4:22-24 

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