[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

River and Rain

They kept me company, driving home, the river and the rain.

I'd had a good (if rather exhausting) trip to the city on business and some 
personal matters, with a whole lot of reminiscing that left me feeling not 
quite sturdy enough for the cross-town expressway to the four-lane highway 
south. So I dawdled and nidged my way to the southbound road that runs 
alongside the river for most of its course -- not a fast or practical 
route, but a contemplative one. I've always liked this road, ever since I 
learned to drive again, in my late 30s. This road curls and meanders; it 
has a genuineness about it. It's authentically part of its landscape. I 
like curls and meanders and genuineness and authenticity, and I like 
running alongside the river companionably.

This has been an exceedingly rainy fall, and Thursday was no exception. 
Rain thrummed and weltered, keeping my small car's windshield wipers fully 
occupied; it dinted and dulled the river's surface with a gazillion 
water-to-water pockmarks, insofar as I could take my eyes off the road to 
notice. I thought to myself, there's the deep, strong, inescapable curve of 
the current, and there's all the surface ruffle.  I thought of the lake by 
which I now live, a body of water tens of thousands of years old and 
inherently as stable and solid as the limestone on which it rests, but 
ruffled on the surface by any passing breeze. And there are a lot of those. 
We do proper, if not large, whitecaps.  I've almost given up on umbrellas 
in rainy weather, because the lakeside wind is so naggy.

I'd had a long talk over lunch with a friend, an interchange on faith. Her 
faith is strong and joyous and straightforward, as mine is not. I'd 
realized as we talked that for me, there's faith and there's faith. I have 
a central, indomitable, inescapable belief in some key things: that God is 
real; that God is love and love is of God; that the Kingdom way is the only 
way; that our response to God must be grounded in integrity and honesty and 
self-knowledge; that the walk must conform to the talk; that whatever 
befalls, God has the power to turn all to good and to redeem everything, 
however improbable that may seem today. And a few other things. This is, 
for me, well past doubt and out the other side. This is a no-brainer.

But I have doubt too -- only I realized, driving alongside the river, that 
for me, doubt is the ruffling of rain or wind on the surface of the water, 
not something deeper. Faith has to live in a state of irritation with the 
real world in which we live and move and have our being, and which does not 
even begin to conform to the reality in which we believe. We all know too 
many good and pious people whose walk and talk are going "huh?" at each 
other -- ourselves most especially included.  We know of heartfelt, 
reasonable prayers that meet with merely silence. We know, unless we're 
deaf, blind, and self-deceived, that evil is very real and that sometimes 
it prevails for a season. We've seen where unbridled arrogance in the name 
of faith can take people, and God does not smile on those occasions.

I like what a very good preacher once said on faith: Do I believe in the 
ultimate victory of good over evil? Absolutely. Do I believe in God's love, 
and the capacity of that love to bring all things around right? Of course. 
Do I believe in the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? 
Totally. Lunch on Thursday, on the other hand.....

But I can place my trust on the surface or on the depths; I can regard the 
shallowness of my own frail human faith, constantly buffeted and tossed 
around by this world's circumstances and the actions of others, or I can 
give proper attention to the deeper, stronger, long-lasting currents. I can 
listen to the chittering squirrel of fearfulness and doubt that sits on the 
surface of things, telling me that it's been bad and will never get any 
better -- or I can listen to the deeper voice that chants of richness and 
blessing, even when it's somewhat dearly bought and far more rich than bright.

I can choose which water gets my attention: the rain, on the surface, or 
the river that flows strong and sure. And has long before any human foot 
pressed the ground here, and will even after we've bred ourselves out of 
the landscape. I can select which water gets my loyalty. I can choose to 
believe in belief or in unbelief, and I tend to believe that belief is the 
deeper water.

The river is ruffled, true, but only the top few inches. The rest flows 
through, unchanging.