Living With, Not Dying From

I was talking to a good friend of mine last night and she was telling me about what she was learning in school Now understand that she is a graduate student studying some form of biology and spends her days studying fish and bugs and rivers...so cool.

Anyway, she was telling me about this thing called the fluid dynamics of rivers. This is a throwback to the idea that rivers are never static or stuck in the same state- they are dynamic or ever-chaning. Meaning that at any given time the river is silmultaneously being emptyed and refilled with water. Its experiencing being drained and filled. At any given moment the river is essentially dying and being given life. And apparently this dynamic is what gives rivers their force and flow strength-essential their power to continue on.

And I thought how appropriate of an analogy that was for life. At any given time we are all experincing life and death. Not just physically but spiritually. Things happen and they are hard and horrible. And they seem to drain the life out of our souls- but at that same time we have the ability in that moment to experience peace and joy- essentially experiencing life.

And then there is the idea that we must consistently be in the state of dying to self so that we can live with Christ.

Why is it that in order to grow and move and continue to have life there must be this continual trade off? That there does have to be a certain loss or death in order to gain a new life? We must be willing to risk one thing to gain another.

I wonder what the world would look life if we all lived like this. If we died to self, to live with Love.

If we died to selfish ambition, to live with social justice.
If we died to judment, to live with acceptance and compassion.
If we died to the cancer of self, to experience a new kind of self-love.
If we died to despair, and lived with hope instead.
If we died to anxiety and depression and lived in the realm of shalom.

I think it be a whole new kind of world if we learned how to live with things instead of die from them.

So maybe what I am trying to say is that the "Fluid dynamics" of life is really the idea of God's redemption and restoration. That before you can experience redemption, you have to experience something to be redeemed from. Before you can be restored, you have to be destroyed.

So may we learn to view the broken places, the heart aches, the times of questioning and deep pain, as a chance to be rebuilt, healed, and given new life of assurance and peace. May we learn to live within the fluid dynamics of the river that is life.