The Relentless Waters of Grace

  There’s a road that winds up through the Ozark mountains. It twists and turns at steep angles to match the terrain, but if you’re brave enough to attempt it, you’ll be rewarded with the most spectacular view. The Ozarks catch a lot of flack from the inhabitants of the Rockies and the Appalachians, but though they may not be nearly as large, they are still stunning. Certainly to my Texas-grown eyes, accustomed to plains and mesquite trees, their grandeur is significant.  Through the pine trees lining the road, you can catch glimpses of other peaks half cast in cloud-cover shadows. Each one magnifies the beauty of the next until you get to the Buffalo River, which has hewn it’s way painfully into a cleft through the middle, leaving the most beautiful mahogany-hued scar line along the otherwise unmarred surface. 

     It’s late summer and the riverbed is low. The waterfalls in the area have all slowed to a trickle. "It’s a shame,” the locals tell me, "the river is beautiful when it’s up." But I haven’t been here at any other time and have nothing for comparison. It may be beautiful when the river is full and rapids crash along the gorge, but with the water this low, a different view is revealed. You can hike down to the base of the river, where its exposed bed is covered in smooth, even stones like fossils in a graveyard, and you can see the change this river has made on the landscape, creating cliffs full of magnificent rust-colored lines hundreds of feet up.

     It’s curious to me, that this source of life that bubbles and flows through the mountains, nourishing every green and living thing, is also simultaneously cutting into rock and carving it up for its own path. The water flowing ruthlessly with its patient and slow doggedness. Centuries have lent themselves to the winding curve that the river now runs. Just time and persistence cutting away. Did the stone it eroded have any say in the matter? Does it hold any regret?

     I feel like I might have if it were me.

     I came out to the Ozarks to process one of the most difficult changes in my life and I find myself pondering the whole broken path my life has taken. Turns I didn’t expect and plateaus I never dreamed, all of them doing the work of shaping me into the person I am right now. On many of those occasions, more than I care to admit, I've had plenty of objections and have been quick to voice them with indignation. When the Lord has taken away something sweet I have demanded he give it back, or at least provide an explanation, still living under the deception that an explanation makes bearable what feels unbearable. When I feel he has withheld the thing that I perceive is best for me, I rage against my disappointment, wondering why he delights to deprive. Is this the God I chose to serve? The one I was told was only ever good and loving? 

 He could leave us to our own devices. We might be alright for awhile, might even feel like we’re finally thriving. But it wouldn’t be long before the deterioration began and decay started graying the edges of our gold visions. Even if everything went well and we experienced only success, achieving all the life we dreamed of exactly the way we dreamed it, I suspect we’d find the whole thing a little stale. Paul warns the Roman church and us along with them that when the Lord gives us over to ourselves it’s more judgement than grace. And yet still we fight when he interrupts our plans. Sanctification is brutal.

     Standing on the peaks of these mountains I felt strong and empowered, but down here at the riverbed there’s a tenderness awakening. I have so often failed to see all the many graces he has lavished on me in the apparent storm, or how the storm itself was doing the unseen job of protecting and redirecting, placing me on the better path, one I’d never have ventured onto of my own choosing. It’s not until long after, when distance and healing has granted perspective, that I ever unwind aching fingers from my own will to accept the idea that maybe he does know best after all. Only then do I find that all of it was doing the work of molding me into the shape he desired for me. 

     Maybe it’s just our own hearts of stone that find it so hard to accept when living water flexes its strength over us. We fancy ourselves mountains, but the Lord is gracious to remind us that we are dust as He leans down and pours His torrent over us until stone once again becomes flesh. 

    If the river does not carve it’s path into the rock, the mountain and everything on it dries up. Any life the mountain has can only be supported by the harsh water of the river. Maybe that most difficult gift is actually the most gracious and generous one. 

     Is He good to carve into us this way? To chisel away our own hopes, desires, dreams, and selves until the landscape of our lives looks almost unrecognizable to us? If we truly are dust and he is the one who breathes life into our bodies and souls, surely he is faithful to shape us into the best version of ourselves, the version that looks remarkably like him.

     It’s a challenge to trust that process, when decades of time produce what may seem an imperceptible change. We'll ask over and over again if it's worth it to let the river of life keep cutting us up this way. Yet one day, there will be a beautiful, many-hued scar running across the span of our years that somehow produces more life than we imagined. We'll look around at a terrain that feels alien to us and yet also feels like home. That’s the thing about the slow, relentless process of change over time: it gives us the gift of trusting as we go, however faltering that trust may appear.

     Wherever the river is taking us, there’s flourishing ahead.