...gathering beside the flood

So now let peace and justice be never far apart,

but flowing like a river for every thirsty heart.

These two shall be united, a mighty flowing stream,

upon whose banks we gather to work and pray and dream.

---Ken Medema, 2003

One thing I’ve noticed lately…peace does not have a very powerful reputation. In an age where even our words are weaponized, the idea that peace could be strong, or courageous, salvific in a world of self-made chaos—such an idea is foreign, unsettling, maybe even a little bit radical.

Now it’s true, that there can be an uneasy peace-and-quiet sort of peace overlaid like a coverlet on a reality of fear and hatred and warring. That creepy sort of quiet from suspense movies, right before the villain bounds out from his hiding place to hatch his dastardly plan on his poor, doomed, should-have-known-better victim.

But there is a powerful peace, and it is real. This peace is rooted in justice—justice that seeks the good of the village, and the equitable treatment of neighbor. When this steady, seeking justice and this powerful, persistent peace join streams, their rolling becomes a massive force that is transformative and healing. Beside that flood we can gather, and dream a new way to live together.

Because empowered peace can change the world.

...my kind of river

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,

Over all victorious in it’s bright increase;

Perfect, yet it floweth fuller everyday,

Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

---Frances R. Havergal, 1874

I have never floated on the Mississippi River, but I’ve read Huckleberry Finn. There is a vivid description of the river that stays with me. Huck and Jim are floating on their raft down the river, intending to veer into the Ohio where it joins the Mississippi. Neither had ever seen the Ohio, or that part of the Mississippi; when they realized that the time for paddling hard upstream of the Ohio was nigh, it was obvious that the river was too wide, too deep, too inexorable to fight against.

I thought of this passage when I read the hymn text for today. This river of God’s peace? It’s no shallow, meandering, drought-sickened rivulet. This river, this peace, is a powerful force, growing ever deeper and fuller in its completeness. This peace is not a resigned, mousy resignation to the ‘true’  powers in the world. It is the force that is able to sustain life, overpowering the unrest, the injustice, the terror in the world with its current. This peace is the true force to be reckoned with.

That’s my kind of river.

...the song goes on

Lo! The apostolic train joins your sacred name to hallow;

prophets swell the glad refrain, and the white-robed martyrs follow.

And from morn to set of sun, through the church the song goes on.

---Ignaz Franz, 18th century

I haven’t spent much time up north, where lots of mighty rivers originate. I have heard that even the Mighty Mississippi begins as a tiny trickle somewhere up in Minnesota (or, #controversyalert, South Dakota!), before growing to one of the most powerful rivers in the world down south. I am reminded of its slightly more northerly section, and its building power, when I think of the heartbreaking scene in Huckleberry Finn in which Huck and Jim desperately try to resist the flow of the swollen Mississippi in an effort to navigate onto the Ohio, and freedom. But you can’t fight the current of a river that big.

And I’ve actually stood in the headwaters of our own ‘mighty Chattahoochee’ in the mountains not many hours’ drive from here. What starts small is added to by the trickle of tens, of hundreds, streams---until it is flowing with a calm force that will not be denied.

The song of praise that all creation sings had its genesis, well, you know, at the beginning. Can’t you imagine the first elements of creation finding voice and offering that gift up to Creator? And on, through the love story of God and God’s creation, the song has grown---tens, hundreds of trickles and rivulets merging and mingling to create one song that will not be denied.

Do you hear the people sing?

...my kind of river

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,

Over all victorious in it’s bright increase;

Perfect, yet it floweth fuller everyday,

Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

---Frances Havergal, 1874

I have never floated on the Mississippi River, but I’ve read Huckleberry Finn. There is a vivid description of the river that stays with me. Huck and Jim are floating on their raft down the river, intending to veer into the Ohio where it joins the Mississippi. Neither has ever seen the Ohio, or that part of the Mississippi; when they realized that the time for paddling hard upstream of the Ohio was nigh, it was obvious that the river was too wide, too deep, too inexorable to fight against.

I thought of this passage when I read the hymn text for today. This river of God’s peace is no shallow, meandering, drought-sickened rivulet. This river, this peace, is a powerful force, growing deeper and fuller in its completeness. This peace is not a resigned, mousy resignation to the ‘true’ powers in the world. It is the force that is able to sustain life, overpowering the unrest in the world with its current. This peace is the true force to be reckoned with.

That’s my kind of river.