It had been a long trip in a van that seemed to grow smaller every day. I was with my new husband and our four children on a camping trip intended to help us bond as a family. We had been traveling for days and we were all worn out and more than a little miserable. No one could agree on what to eat or where to stop or sleep or sit. Then we found the mountain river and saw other people hiking up the stream. “Come on,” we said to the kids, “what could be better than walking in a river?”
The clear rushing water, the refreshing breeze, drew us to join the other people who had gathered to walk the river. It was a relief to be out of the van and free of cramped quarters. We all just kept walking, longer than any other activity we had attempted to share.
The sound of water and the warmth of sunshine nestled around us, calming and soothing our tattered spirits, but the real healing did not begin until my shorts fell into the river. Too many beautiful rocks had found their way into my pockets, the last one wasn’t even particularly big or beautiful, but it was the one that tipped the balance and brought forth calamity.
It is hard to retrieve fallen shorts from a rushing river. Once they are wet and soggy they do not want to slip easily back into place. Keeping my balance in the strong current with wet shorts wrapped around my ankles was quite a challenge. The few minutes seemed like an eternity before I was once again appropriately covered.
It is tough for a private, reserved person to be the center of a laughing crowd of people, but there I was scrambling to reclaim some sense of decorum and decency where none could be found. I don’t know who noticed my predicament first or who started laughing first, but the healing waves of laughter came quickly and it was in that moment of lunacy and embarrassment that our new family was born afresh.
The Psalmist says that God is the rock of our salvation. Isaiah says God is the rock who bore us and birthed us. It is easy to imagine a towering rock the size of a mountain, but it was a small rock that became the ark of our salvation. It gathered with bigger and more beautiful rocks and dropped my shorts into the river.
It took us to a place we had not been before. A place of shared laughter and grace. I was the last person to laugh and it did not happen until I was safely covered. I looked around at our four children and my husband all shaking with mirth and kindness. That was the laughter that gathered me in the arms of love and joy.
Nearly 30 years later there is still a rock in my pocket, not the same one, often just a tiny one, to remind me: The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation… Psalm 18:46. May you find rocks of laughter, stones of hope as God leads you forth in love and mercy.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This week our contributor is Reverend Beth Benson of the First Congregational Church – UCC in Grand Marais.
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