THE PASTOR’S PEN
The Pastor’s Pen
3-10-2011
Who makes a way? Who makes a path through the waters? Who brings us out or transports us to safety? Who protects us from the burning fire? You know, this passage from Isaiah 43 takes on a whole new meaning when you just add three simple punctuation marks, does it not?
About a month ago, at the 11:15 am worship, I shared a story from a book my wife gave me for Christmas. The book was written by Fritz Kling and I believe the story bears repeating as we enter the Lenten season.
Two distinct eastbound rivers converge to form the fabled Amazon River, which then flows nearly one thousand miles until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean at Belem.
Like oil and water, the Amazon’s two tributaries do not blend or mix upon meeting, but create instead a seam of sorts. They appear from the air to be side-by-side runners of black and caramel carpet.
The southern tributary, Rio Negro (“black water”), is the largest black water river in the world. It is tannic – the color of very dark tea or even wine – because upstream it cuts through forests of leaf shedding trees. Rio Negro’s water is dense and heavy, virtually free of mineral content and home to sparse fish life because it is so acidic. Though dark, it is also crystal clear.
The northern tributary, Rio Solimṍes (“white water”), is caramel colored and wavy, full of churning vegetation and silt from mountains in western South America. It has plentiful fish life. Faster moving than Rio Negro, Rio Solimṍes swirls, churns, and rushes toward the Atlantic.
At the meeting of the waters, not only is the seam dramatically visible from above, but it is also three-dimensional – almost as if an underwater wall or baffle rises from the riverbed to the surface of the water. A Brazilian missionary friend described diving into the river and swimming under water from one seam to the other. She exhilarated in bursting through the underwater wall into the other stream.
For ten miles, as the newly formed Amazon courses east, the two rivers run completely distinct and separate in their shared channel. The seam visibly exists for that whole distance until, finally, the waters blend.
As God now carries us through the process of blending our lives with Christ’s let’s remember one thing. We’re different from God, and different from each other. It is God who patiently waits for each of us to blend with the life and example of Christ. It is God whose prevenient care looks after us when we stray. It’s God’s love that has made a way for each of us to find forgiveness. And when this Life/Lenten season is complete, it is God who has prepared us to live forever.
SEE YA IN CHURCH!
JIM NOGGLE
