Crystal clear. Rippling. Crisp. Twinkling. Refreshing. Continuous. Pure. Briskly moving, but not too fast. Despite its gentle current, it held the power above all in its path. This brook intersecting the section of Superior Hiking Trail that I was traveling was a Godsent after many miles on tired legs.

I sat on the shore of this charming little brook observing it and its effect on me. It was lovely. My bare feet recovered in its coolness. My eyes delighted at the sight of the sun glistening off it in a million little points of light. My ears took in the sounds of the moving water, crinkled colorful leaves floating by effortlessly. Almost.

My attention was drawn to the only less-than-beautiful sight in front of me. Leaves had piled up behind one of the rocks in the stream. The leaves no longer floating effortlessly as they seemed designed to do, but rather jumbled up, tearing at one another, rotting. Unhappy to look at really. One more leaf joined the pile and with that unnoticeable force the pile of leaves broke free in a kerfuffle of disorganization and ugliness, passing me in clumps, littering the water.

As I moved my feet to avoid the grossness of it it dawned on me. Maybe I’m just like that rock sometimes. And those leaves are just like my feelings sometimes. It was a real-life illustration of something smart I read one day and now witnessed. We are independent of our feelings. We, like the rock, are able to observe our feelings as they pass over or around us. But sometimes we try to catch those leaves and save them, haphazardly holding on to them in a jumbled mess until something or someone causes us to let them all go. Feelings, like the leaves, were not meant to be held onto either, to keep them longer or to avoid feeling them as they pass over us. They were meant to be experienced or observed for a time, then pass by as quickly as they came upon us. It gets downright ugly if we don’t let them do that.

John 7:38 “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

But gosh, those feelings can get me sometimes. The ones I love so much they become something I grab at all the time, pulling them close to me for as long as I can contain them. Or the ones I hate and simply don’t even want to see at all, so I tuck them away or try my darndest to push them back upriver. And when I try to do that too many times those feelings threaten to define me, become part of me. And no matter what kind of feeling it is when they all become jumbled up together the beauty flowing all around me is muddled. It just wasn’t meant to be that way.

But consider the stream for a moment. It’s perfect, isn’t it? Its clarity. Its purity. Its power. Gosh, if I was super cheesy, I’d say that water is just like the Holy Spirit, isn’t it? And now I hear my own kids groan as they always do when in the midst of whatever situation I seem to mention the Spirit. But isn’t it so? It can flow so beautifully from us and around us when we allow it. When we aren’t struggling so hard to hold on to the things we aren’t meant to hold on to. But thank God that water also rescues us from the moments we do hold on to the unholdable, eventually cleaning away the debris and leaving beauty in its path. Always. Forever.

So today, instead of saying “Gosh, it’s such a perfect day I’d just love to bottle it up and keep it with me,” I’ll smile and thank God for it and for the next wonderful blessing that is just upriver. How lovely.