Racking her brain for material for her Sunday school class in rural Missouri, she thought to herself, “How can you say there’s nothing to teach about when you have the sun and the sky and the trees and the flowers!” Hence the theme of this song.
In my lookings and listenings to the Voice of My Lord lately I've been reminded that I can be no other and do no better than to excel at what the Creator has made me to be. I've been watching at waterways - brooks, rivers, the ocean. I saw that as water travels it is free of care, it is at rest even as it is rushing! Some courses are traveling in miniature springs over mossy ledge, a trickling that seems set apart from the real flow, but as I followed its descent I saw that ministream join into the mighty rush of the greater body, and there was no distinction whatsoever when that took place - water was indistinguishable from water, regardless of its beginnings (water has no age; where a spring joins in to the flow cannot be determined downstream). I saw puddles caught in hollows of rock, apparently off to the side and useless, but these also are doing a work - waterbugs skittering, algae growing, mosses nourished, frogs fed! And even these puddles, apparently still and unregarded, will rise up invisible to man into the clouds to rain again upon the earth. Nothing, not a drop of water, is wasted.
At the ocean I saw the tide recede, yet clear pools had caught in hollows of sand and among rocks at the northern shore where seagulls dipped their crooked bills and raised their heads jerking delightedly to swallow! And these "left behind" collections of water were not still - the sand made way for their smaller, slower streams in glorious patterns along the beach - waves and ripples that only God could make in such random perfection - flowing, flowing, to the sea! I saw that water is cleansed as it is beaten upon the shoreline, coming and going out again, in much the same way that brookwater dashed upon and among many rocks becomes very pure, crystalline, transparent. I saw that as the sand is shaped by the path the water chooses, even rock is transformed by water, simple water, water flowing! Hollows and crevasses and cracks ever-widening; even towering walls of stone are hollowed out by the movement of mere water (and also, in more forceful ways, by what the water may carry within its deeps or upon its surface).
We are like this, like water in these many forms and places, whether we are aware of this truth or not. I asked my God, "Am I like this puddle, sitting still?" No, he said, though I have been at times. "Surely, Lord, I am not this mighty force cascading?!" No, He said, but look: He showed me one very tiny waterfall running happily over jagged ledge (the water was not hurt at all by these sharp edges). Watch this, He said. I saw that I am like this streamlet, tiny and slow, moss-sparkling - slowed by circumstances that I do not control but only travel over, ride through, bounce lightly upon. Yet soon that little rivulet was meeting up with the greater course and became indistinguishable, unseparated, was as mighty, strong and sure as all the water that flowed above the joining-place. He told me that even the stagnant puddles are so blessed - for every pure droplet of rain suspended like jewels upon the greening all around me, dropping down after each one's determined time, would also join the ever-flow, and the rain was made of puddles.
I saw how bubbly waves kiss the beach, how passionate the encounter is, and so loathe the land to let this partner recede again that the jumping grains of sand will chase after her as she rushes back into the sea (they do not realize she will come again; they want to become one with her)! I saw that the rocks in forest and at shoreline love the caressing that changes their appearance with every swift embrace. I saw that water is happy - still or moving - to be itself, and I have been reminded in these places and ways that this is my all, my everything, too. Praise God.
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
~Philippians 4:12-13
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Psa 107:1 O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever.
Psa 107:2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;
Psa 107:3 And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south.
Amen.