Peace like a River

Right now I am doing Breaking Free by Beth Moore for my personal Bible Study. She shares the neatest analogy that I just had to share. It was "peace like a river." Now, I've heard this a thousand times in my life, but never really thought about its implications. Beth has her own way of wording the analogy that is fabulous. I'll let you borrow the book if you'd like to read it. I also had some thoughts of my own.

Reading her thoughts made me think about all of the different types of rivers that I've encountered.

• There is the small stream during a drought.
• There is also the trickle that one large step can take you from side to side.
• Then there are ones like the French Broad or Swannanoa that can be quickly flowing, yet still somewhat on the small side. On a good day, in the right place, you can cross it by jumping from rock to rock to the other side.
• There is the amazing Nantahala with its rushing waters that keep tourists busy the entire summer rafting through its roughness.
• There's also the river like Brent and I encountered in Costa Rica two years ago that we thought we could follow just to find out that we would have to get waist deep in water to continue.
• Or the one in Ohio this past summer on a Hiking Monday where Wilson was with us and it would have been the same situation. Brent talked me out of crossing it since one of us would have to carry the poor pup. In these types of rivers there is always the fear of falling in and I'm usually not dressed for such excitement.
• There are also the classic rivers like the Ohio and the Mississippi. They are HUGE, and sustain HUGE boats and are impossible to cross by swimming.
• And cartoon rivers that always flow to a certain point before "the waterfall". You know the ones. There is always some poor pathetic little animal in a life raft that could never stay in the raft when the waterfall comes, but somehow survives until reaching the pool at the bottom.

Even as I sit here typing this I think of more and more rivers. But they all have two things in common: a source and a destination. This is like us. Our source: Jesus. Our destination: Eternal Life.

The Christian life is a river. Sometimes it is dry. Other times it is gently flowing. Or maybe it is rushing by so quickly that we're not sure we can stand. Still others there are waterfalls threatening our lives. But no matter what we still "flow" on to the next part of our lives. We go through all of these stages and we are sustained by God's peace... just like a river!