Driving around Cook County this week you can’t help but notice all the creeks, streams, and rivers. It is as if someone opened gates further on up the waterways, and now all the water from the winter’s stockpile of snow can flow to lakes big and small. Eventually, we know, all the snow and ice will be gone, and the waters even of the Pigeon River will return to more average depths and flow-rates. And then at some point, more rain will come our way, and it will look again like flood-gates have been opened.
Maybe that is the way it is for people of faith, too. At times, we don’t notice our faith; at times we may have only an average-depth flow of attention to faith. Or we may feel a dryness about our faith, like an August view of the Devil’s Track riverbed, rocky and still next to Highway 61. Then at times of great joy, like weddings, Easter, Christmas, our faith may bubble along merrily as does the Brule flowing by Judge Magney State Park in May. And then there are times when we see something like the Cross River in July, and we pull over to spend time alongside.
Faith is hard to get a grip on, hard to describe, hard even to understand. It doesn’t stay at a constant rate, even for the most faith-filled folks. Times of dryness can come, sometimes for years, sometimes short, but dark. My own journey of faith has included childhood acceptance, adult turning from faith to disbelief; then after 30 years of disbelief, living with faith-restored. For me, “faith-restored” didn’t include a downpour of hard-times. It did include a long series of realizations, like a steady drip that you finally notice.
Like the Flute Reed River during most Junes, I’d had steady exposure to the nurturing waters when my parents took me to church as a child. As an adult I decided that the possibility of there being any godlike being was, to my way of thinking, impossible. There was no water of faith moving through my life. I wasn’t looking for it, nor for a gate to open in order to resume the flow. And then, as life continued, I began to be aware of a small rivulet of curiosity within me.
I began noticing words of faith when people spoke them. I began noticing people who believed. Over time, and over much analytical consideration of my own motives, I realized it wasn’t me, stirring me. It wasn’t me, helping me see and hear with new interest. This beginning of faith was like hearing, but not yet seeing, the beginnings of a small creek—this new curiosity was bubbling up from some other source— surprise!—God!
This spring, out and about in Cook County, I’ve thought about rivers and headwaters, about faith and source. From time to time, looking at the rushing waters I’ve said something like, “looks like the floodgates have been opened.”
It’s been about 18 years since I began noticing God again, and God continues to surprise, getting me to see much in different ways. The Lord says, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth… so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” (Isaiah 55, 10-11).
Spend some time this spring noticing our regions’ rivers, and spend some time pondering God. Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hovland.
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