Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again. (Eccl. 11:1)
THE RIVER OF LIFE
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I loved a good summer rain. All the kids in the neighborhood gathered on the curb to play in the water. Placing homemade boats of sticks and leaves in the water, we watched to see whose would go the farthest. Some were fast; others got stuck in the twists and turns of the flow.
Life is like that summer rain stream: it ebbs and flows. If you’ve ever watched a leaf floating in water, you know you can’t predict its course. Yet how many times do we try to control our world. How many times do we try to make the leaf float in the direction we want. The truth is we can’t, for we control nothing.
Scripture tells us time and again to surrender to God. AA tells us to “let go and let God.” This can be an easy expression to repeat but difficult to live out in the real world. For many, it takes a crisis to move us to that place of surrender, to realize we control nothing. The sooner we come to this realization, the faster we’ll move through the situation into God’s will. And isn’t that really the stream we want to flow in anyway? The river of life that flows from the throne room to the parched and thirsty land where we live called earth.
—Marty Norman
Begin each day by surrendering to the Lord yourself and your desire to control.
Marty Norman is a wife, mother, and grandmother. She is an avid reader, loves to hike, and is passionate about mission work.
