ALONG THE WAY ✦ AN INHABITATION OF EZEKIEL 47
The River Knows
There comes a moment when the soul must choose.
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I have stood beside many rivers.
I have admired their patience.
Their refusal to hurry.
Their quiet confidence that stone, given enough years, will eventually yield.
I thought Scripture was something like that.
A landscape to observe.
A current to appreciate from the safety of the bank.
I mistook proximity for participation.
There is a peculiar comfort in standing on the shore.
One can measure the water.
Name its movements.
Study its depths from a distance.
One remains dry.
One remains in control.
Perhaps this is why I loved certainty so much.
It asks so little of the body.
But rivers are not built merely to be admired.
They ask an impossible question.
Will you enter?
Not with your conclusions.
Not with your diagrams.
Not carrying the illusion that water bends to the will of the one who studies it.
Will you trust what cannot be possessed?
The first step is almost disappointing.
Only ankles.
The current is hardly noticed.
One still believes they could return to shore whenever they choose.
Faith feels manageable there.
Almost civilized.
The knees are another matter.
The river begins making decisions of its own.
You discover balance was always more fragile than you imagined.
Prayer changes there.
It becomes less about understanding.
More about remaining upright.
By the waist, surrender has become unavoidable.
Water has a language no classroom can teach.
It presses against every instinct to control.
It smiles gently at the soul that still imagines itself master of the current.
Then comes the place where feet no longer reach the bottom.
The place Ezekiel could not cross.
Only inhabit.
The place where theology becomes communion.
Where certainty becomes worship.
Where the God I sought to understand reveals that He was never asking to be mastered.
Only known.
I wonder if creation has been preaching this all along.
Mountains that cannot be owned.
Oceans that refuse containment.
Stars no hand can gather.
Wildflowers blooming where no eye applauds them.
Beauty has never argued for God.
It has simply borne witness.
The world is louder now.
Everything demands usefulness.
Everything asks its price.
Even beauty is expected to justify itself.
Yet dawn never apologizes for arriving.
Rain never invoices the thirsty ground.
The river keeps its ancient appointment whether anyone pauses to watch.
Perhaps glory has always been wonderfully unconcerned with our efficiency.
The Architect never built a museum.
He built a dwelling.
Not a place where visitors might wander through admiring His designs before returning unchanged.
A place where breath fills dust.
Where dry bones remember movement.
Where temples become living people.
Where rivers escape their banks.
Where heaven insists upon meeting earth.
I have spent years tracing the blueprints.
I do not regret a single hour.
Every beam matters.
Every foundation stone.
Every carefully measured line.
But eventually every blueprint asks to become a home.
And every river asks to become a baptism.
There comes a moment when the soul must choose whether it will spend its life describing the water…
Or be carried by it.
I think I know my answer now.
It frightens me.
It also feels strangely like coming home.
