Serenity

Mornings are a better time of day. Unfortunately, thanks to the vagaries of an ever-fluid work schedule, I rarely wake up as early as I would like. Even if I try to set my alarm, my half-slumbering fingers know that they can hit the snooze button as many times as they like because there isn't much to beg my time.  This particular morning, however, I had made plans to meet Hadassah and Debbie at Chickies Rock to run the trail to the overlook, so I roused myself with rather less grogginess than a mere five hours of sleep (after nearly ten hours at work) ought seemingly to have dictated. 


They failed to show up, one because she didn't want to miss church, the other because she got lost and my signal is never good on the hill so I couldnae direct her. But I still had the opportunity to run by myself, which I did, every sore, stiff, and out of shape inch of me.


As I was sitting on a stone column of the fence at the overlook, I was contemplating the water as it rushed downstream. Even from many feet above and away, the distant thunder of water against rock still reached my ears. A glorious symphony, free and fierce. What classical music (save, perhaps, that of good old Elijah) has ever made a morning brighter?


But I realized something. The water's music, every wonderful note, was the music of pain. It could not produce sound of such volume or perhaps at all if it were not for the rocks that barred the way. As it cast itself against and around the stones in its way, it was then that the notes issued forth. "For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few..." (Matthew 7:14)


"The Water Song"
         from Hind's Feet in High Places
Come, oh come! Let us away--
Lower, lower every day,
Oh what joy it is to race
Down to find the lowest place.
This the dearest law we know--
"It is happy to go low."
Sweetest urge and sweetest will,
"Let us go down lower still."
Hear the summons night and day
Calling us to come away.
From the heights we leap and flow
To the valleys down below.
Always answering to the call,
To the lowest place of all.
Sweetest urge and sweetest pain,
To go low and rise again.


To be brought low. Humbled. To embrace pain not for itself but because it is but a small price to pay for the better thing. And then to rise again...