Rememberances and Rejoicing

The woman sat by the river and drank in the late summer sun.  She felt the rays penetrate her skin as they warmed her clear to the bone, and she knew that winter rains would begin any day.  That another long winter of homeschool and kids busyness loomed just over the next hill.  Something so bittersweet about those last days of sun, like I'm storing them up in my soul for a cold, rainy day.  Like I know that I will need this memory of glassy, sunkist waters rushing past in a cascade of rippling sound.  The roar of the river provides a place of peace for my weary mind and I forget about the piles of laundry and stacks hidden in closets. 

In my mind  I begin to recount how my life has been touched by grace.  SCRATCH THAT, ruled by grace.  For every sorrow grace poured in, for every loss new mercies.  I have been held together through it all by loving mercy.  I see the strong, green grass growing along the riverbank and it reminds me of the chords of mercy that held me together when I thought I would come apart.

A tear spills over, for I did not come apart, like an exhausted swimmer I rolled onto my back and floated on mercy.  At times the water washed over my face, but I did not drown.  I learned to relax in the waters of mercy, to trust what I could not see.  The river carried me downstream to a new place where I had never been.  Here my feet could touch bottom.

Suddenly, in this moment with the sun on my face I realize that in every season I have been carried along by mercy, in this He has never failed me.

Near the banks float loose logs and I think of how when pressure and pain came I clung to those logs trying desperately to get back on solid ground. I tried so hard to do the right thing in order to make the torrent stop.  I didn't understand that I was supposed to let go and trust.

So that now, when the season changes and the pressure comes I simply lift my feet and let the currents of love and mercy carry me down river.  The only thing  for me to do is to focus my mind on His goodness and recount the ways in which I am blessed.  He will not let me drown.  As I lay back gently in mercy and float away on her current I know to wave, because once you relax into love and mercy, once you ride over her waters, you are changed and there is no going back.

Today in the sun is a day of remembrances of the seasons and mileposts at which His mercies were new every morning.

 

2 Kings 23  Josiah gathers the people to read the book of the covenant.  Then King Josiah renews the covenant with all the people to follow the Lord and keep His commands and decrees with all his heart and soul.  Then he proceeded to tear down every single bit of idolatry throughout the land including idols in their homes.