Rivers....

Rivers, or specifically the Red River, has been on my radar a lot this week.  In fact, the Red is  the focal point of life in Selkirk right now. Why?  Because the ice started to break up, melt, and move last week. This impacts life here.  A road over in East Selkirk flooded which means that the main bridge connecting East Selkirk and Selkirk is closed and people have to drive a 10 km detour. Some years people houses are flooded resulting in thousands of dollars of damages or even to the point of being "lost".

Here is a picture of the river and the flooding near our house from Thursday, March 30th.  Huge pieces of ice came up onto the banks and water flowed onto the grass.

And here is what that same area looks like today. (April 3) 

There ice and debris in the middle is actually the edge of the river.  Now that the river is flowing, the flooding will go down and life will get back to normal.

This morning, another river came to mind.   As I was praying, I remembered a song from my University of Guelph Campus Crusade days.  A boppy tune that went like this, "Jesus is a river of love, and He flows from heaven above."  I wondered, is the idea of flowing rivers even in the Bible? So I search biblegateway.com for the word "flow" and found the most important river.

John 7:37-39

"On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'. Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified."

Revelation 22:1

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb"

The river of life - the flow of the Holy Spirit - from God to us and then out of our hearts to the world is where I want to live day in and day out.  Earlier this morning, I spent time reviewing my journal from the last three weeks and was surprised to see how much I have been wrestling with myself and God.  Sleepy, grouchy, sorrowful, uncertain, hopeless, doubting were some of the sentiments expressed. Yes, there was also grateful, content, joyful, hopeful, and trusting.  It was quite a mixed bag though!  I felt some barrier or block with God and realized that some how I was out of that flow of living water.  As winter froze the water to stop the flow of the Red, my unwillingness to trust God with the painful, distressing, and scary things of life slows up the flow of the Spirit in and through me. Just as the warming of the sun is melting the ice on the Red, so my heart needed the warming of God's love spoken to me through His Word, His people, and His Spirit.  I can't explain to you how exactly that happens, but it does.  My part: to believe and receive.

My prayer for all of us is that we will continue on in God's love with His Spirit flowing through us.

in Christ,

Tracy