The River of Life
by Amy Raines
The River of Life
By Amy Raines
Most of us have tasted bad water, like the
water I tasted at an RV
park in South Carolina at one time. What was that
awful smell?
Goodness, its coming from the tap! What a foul,
polluted smell.
Sometimes tap water tastes salty or thick,
sometimes it has a chemical
aftertaste, or even the stale taste left after the
filter has done its
job. We are used to bad water.
When I arrived in Glacier National Park last
year there was smoke
and haze in the air from the forest fire on the
east side of the park.
We found a campsite without too much trouble - I
had made sure to
leave early that morning from my home in North
Idaho so we would be
sure to get a tent site. With four of my kids and
my mom with me, we
had left in a whirlwind rush, food packed - did we
get the pillows?
neighbors showed up to milk the goats - ok, all
set to go. With just
enough money for gas and a tent site for one
night, we were set to
have an adventure.
We prayed over our 20 year old Suburban as we
pulled out of
Bonner’s Ferry. We were only two women and four
kids, my husband was
out of town and could not help us!
After we set up the tent and ate the lunch we
had packed, we set
off to experience the “going to the sun” road. As
we drove down the
first fairly level stretch, I looked up and
exclaimed about the
cliff-like peaks straight ahead. As I craned my
neck to see the top of
them through the windshield, little did I know I
would be driving
across the face of those precipices on a road
carved out of a sheer
cliff, looking down at the stretch of road I was
now on, perhaps a
half mile below, and watching other cars like ants
crawling slowly
along.
As the road rose and narrowed, my old car
huffed, chuffed and
sputtered at the prolonged steep grade, while my
kids exclaimed and
shrieked as they peered out at the blue air beside
us and nothingness
for a thousand feet down.
We finally reached Logan Pass where we hoped
to go to the visitor
center, but as I circled the crowded lot for the
15th time in my
gasping old car, unable to find a single
unoccupied parking space, I
gave it up and headed back down the mountain,
praying my car would
stay going just long enough to get over the “hump”
(the continental
divide) so I could just coast the rest of the way
down to the
campsite. Whatever else happened, I did not want
to break down on the
top of Logan’s Pass!
Thankfully, the car stayed running and we
reached camp with no
problem, though it was with trepidation that I
turned it off. (Would
it start again?)
The next day it actually started with no
problem - maybe it just
needed a rest!- and we contemplated going up the
pass again, as the
air was more clear this day and the visibility
would be better. As we
were reading some of the park info, we realized
there was a free park
shuttle to take us to the top of the pass. FREE
PARK SHUTTLE! we
exclaimed. We grabbed some things for lunch and
stuffed them into a
backpack along with the camera and wasted no time
hopping aboard the
next shuttle and soon found ourselves at the top
of Logan’s Pass,
where behind the visitor center there is a
trailhead for an easy hike
to a hidden lake overlook.
The hike proved to be beautiful, the sun was
warm, not hot, like
eternal spring in August, and patches of low
growing wildflowers were
all around us along with a few stunted trees in
this high haven near
the treeline. The sky was clean, without the haze
from yesterday,
though the smoke still rose from the fire on the
east side of the
park, a huge forbidding plume rising over the
mountain, mistaken at
first for a cumulus cloud until the colored
undertones gave it away,
sickly pink and grey revealing this cloud’s true
origin.
This hike had hundreds of giant wooden steps
to climb, not a
problem for me but after an hour we were almost on
top of the
continental divide and my two year old was ready
to give up. His
inexhaustible energy had been beaten by steps
that, for him, came to
his waist. “I’m tired. I don’t want to walk!”
“Just a little further,”
I told him. Our water bottles had been empty for
quite some time,
except for a few warm, unappetizing swallows.
Everyone was thirsty.
We came to a sparkling stream which flowed out
of the side of a
peak a few hundred yards away.
I don’t say I recommend to do what we did
next, and almost surely
there are good reasons not to, but we were thirsty
and we did it. We
filled our water bottles out of that clear
flowing, sparking, pristine
stream flowing down the from a glacier out of the
continental divide.
We stood in the warm springtime sun, in August,
and drank, and drank.
First one sip, then another, and another. The icy
coolness gave way to
the flavor of the mountain rocks, pure crystalline
snows from long ago
locked away untouched until the moment of release
into this freshet.
You could imaging health and youth flowing in, as
the ancient minerals
worked to energize each and every cell. A
prehistoric goodness all
but lost was in that water, and we drank our fill,
and then some. It
was a blast of purity, like water from heaven,
water the way it was
meant to be.
Our water bottles now full of this delicious
drench, we continued
the short distance to the lake overlook. As we
headed back down the
mountain, we passed the stream again and topped
off our bottles. As we
left the stream behind us, I heard God whisper
into my soul, “Whoever
drinks this water will thirst again.” And my heart
finished, “But
whoever drinks the water I give him will never
thirst again. Indeed
the water I give him will become a fountain,
welling up to eternal
life.” I was awestruck. Do you mean, Lord, that
your water is better
than this, more pure, more life-giving, that your
headwater is the
true Source, and this just a weak earthly draught
barely reminiscent
of the life in your possession? Then, by all
means, give me some of
this water.
How often I had imagined that scene from John
chapter 4, the
bucket coming up from that well long ago, full of
mossy tasting,
reused, maybe even slimy or smelly water. Everyday
water. The value of
what Jesus offered didn’t seem very impressive
when compared to the
worst of Earth’s offering, but that day He gave me
a new perspective,
and on that day my prayer became, “By all means
give me some of this
water!”
We made it home again after that day, back to
the ordinary, back
to goats and household tasks, back to hot dry
August, but I didn’t
forget that He had my water, the water beyond
extraordinary, for all
of my life, the water he would give me free of
charge, exchanging my
life for His Life, and the pitiful pleasures of
this earth for his
unfathomable bounty. Released from dabbling around
the same old
polluted pond, trying to fill my need, trying to
fill my life,
released to never thirst again.
If you would like to read the part of the Bible
that God spoke to my
heart that day, you will find it in John chapter
4, the story of Jesus
and the woman at the well.
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