A Man at River's Edge

Last night in prayer, the Lord impressed upon my mind images representative of His Love—continuous, inexhaustible, and beyond the ability to thwart or control.

Imagine the love of God like a great river. Not a small stream or creek, but something like the Mississippi.

Now, imagine a person standing beside it, watching it flow. A seemingly endless current, all flowing in one direction as though from an inexhaustible source.

For the sake of this analogy, we will omit technologies, heavy machinery, explosives, and the various methods mankind has devised to divert or dam a river in order to create a lake. These are not means available to the person beholding the river, and God's love is greater still and can never be thwarted by any degree of human ingenuity.

Now, imagine this solitary individual at river's edge possesses many heavy stones.

These represent his sins, large and small.

Some are like pebbles, each one taken alone of very little weight, but all together amassing a great burden. Other rocks are more akin to boulders that he can barely carry even with all effort vigor and strength.

Suppose this person, exhausted by this burden for so long, so dismayed by all the people he has known, who have built their entire lives around their stones, and having seen the futility of it all, is told if he casts these stones into the river he will never see them again. He will be freed of their weight. By casting them into the river, he should never even see them again, for the river is very deep.

This person would be under an illusion, if he beheld the river in all its might, that he could ever, even if he were to find more stones, cast so many and of such a great size into the river so as to stop its current.

Still, the thought occurs to him, this stone is too heavy, too large, and the river could not possibly take it.

From such a foolish delusion, he carries the boulders as well as his many pebbles, for they are great in number, as he strolls at river's edge.

Yes, he has meditated on the river often. He has admired it from afar. He has wondered about both its source and its destination. He has considered how it persists, every the same, in one direction, though the river itself contains a flow of water that is never precisely the same, as new water continues to flow from its source.

Inspired by this curiosity, by the river’s beauty, and his many questions, he begins a journey to find the river’s end.

With great effort, he loads up all his many rocks, boulders, and pebbles upon his back that he might carry the burden with him as he follows the river’s course.

The distance is so great, though, that merely following the river, he realizes in time that he may never reach its end. No matter how close to it he means to walk, imitating by his own steps the river’s own course, what the river does with seeming ease is for him a grueling and impossible task.

Still convinced to try no less, he begins the journey. While on this journey, he has many occasions to admire the river. His meditations deepen as he considers the river’s wonder, its beauty, its great force and seemingly unending source.

But he never casts his rocks into it. He was told he might, but the idea of casting even a single stone into this glorious river is beyond what he can seriously consider. He fears that by doing so, he might somehow interrupt the current. Still more, he has in a sense come to grow in affection for the stones. They are his stones, after all. In some way, he chose each one. Some he sought with great effort, and others seemed to come upon him by chance, and he embraced them no less.

Yes, they are a burden of a kind. A great weight that hinders his heart’s deepest desire. They leave him restless. But they are his stones, and he cannot imagine his life without them.

He certainly recognizes that so long as he persists in his effort to carry these stones he will never be relieved of the burden.

And if that was all it was, perhaps, he’d bear the weight.

But the weight seems to grow more oppressive over time. Under the weight of so many stones, his legs weaken. His back aches. Every step becomes arduous, if not impossible.

And it saddens him for a moment when he realizes that no matter how much he admires the river, he will never be able to find its end. And he begins to chastise himself for the foolishness of ever having such a dream, for imagining for even a moment that he could complete this journey as one who must carry so many stones.

But he will never forget the river. He cannot shake the dream. It’s there, with a promise that seems so available, quite literally at his feet. And no matter how many times he tries to forget about it, he knows it will remain there, a hope, a longing.

So he comes to realize he has not even the strength to carry the stones away from the river’s edge, nor can he imagine a time when he will lose the dream, and cease to admire the great river. He has, from beyond its current and at shore, meditated on it so often that the wonder of it is permanently impressed upon his mind.

Thus, he is left with only two choices.

To remain with his burdensome collection, to which he has inexplicably grown so attached, and thus fall to his face in despair…

...or he can cast his precious stones into the river.

It seems no choice at all.

So he makes the difficult choice.

It is time to cast his stones away and turn them over to the river.

Perhaps he begins with the boulders (the great and grave sins) or perhaps the pebbles (the venial sins, those little flaws that do not alone amount to much).

Either way, upon casting a stone into the river, he feels a sense of loss for but a moment. The sense of loss fades quickly thereafter, immediately relieved of the burden’s weight.

But then he recognizes something he had not thought about before.

He now holds a lighter load to carry, and maybe he can still hold on to the rest. With a lighter load, perhaps, he can continue this journey at river’s edge.

But before he makes his decision, he waits. He wants to see what happens to the river after casting his first stone into it. He watches the river to see if his stone, now completely disappeared from sight, will alter the river's course, change the river's momentum as it was, or impact its flow.

But he sees no such evidence of change. The river continues as it always had, seemingly unaware of the heavy burden he tossed into its current. His stone, as great and heavy a burden that it was to him, is as nothing to the river.

So he continues the journey, inspired. This time, he’ll be able to make it on his own two feet.

At first, he is able to take a few more steps. He'd thought he ran out of steps before, but now that his burden is lessened, he finds he is once again able to put one foot in front of the other.

But then, in a short time, the same exhaustion returns. Once again, as much as before, he finds himself overwhelmed, unable to continue. Even now, though the weight is lighter, it is still too much to carry over such a distance.

Well, he thinks, this last stone I cast into the river, I do not miss it as I thought I would, and it did not affect the river in any way.

So perhaps I shall toss in another...

And so the process repeats itself. Again and again.

Casting a stone into the river, feeling the relief, and turning back to his journey, only to find himself once again exhausted.

In time, even the smallest pebble is too much. Even his own weight becomes too much to bear. For he has spent all his resources on the journey thus far.

His feet become tired. Painful blisters form, and more blisters upon those blisters.

And now he has but just a few stones left. And being the only ones remaining, they have become even more precious to him. The prospect of casting them aside, well, it’s almost unthinkable.

Yes, he has cast off greater stones before. But now it seems that it is almost impossible to drop even the smallest one.

And even if he did, even if he managed to, he knows his own weight is too much. He could never complete the journey, regardless.

So he thinks, alas, I shall remain here for the rest of my days. I will have my precious stones, few though they are, and in this mud at river’s edge I shall die.

At that moment, on the verge of despair, a great boat sails past in the current.

What is this? He thinks to himself.

The people aboard are full of such joy, not wearied at all by the journey. The river itself carries them on, as if the river’s current was their own! As if the river supplied them with its own strength!

Someone aboard the boat calls out to him. "Friend, whatever are you doing there?"

They know full well what he is doing. They see his feet, the sweat on his brow, and the many stones he still carries.

He replies "I so admire this river and thought I might pursue its end, but I have grown so weary, and have decided I should remain here and die on its shore."

This does not dissuade the man on the boat. After all, he was once in that same very position.

He sees in this man his own story. So he calls out to the man again: "Come aboard! For that is where we are going, to the river’s end! The river will take us there by its own power!"

"Yes!" the man exclaims. "But as you can see, I am carrying with me many things. May I bring them aboard?"

"You cannot" the person on the boat says. "But you have no cause to despair, friend! Cast them to the river! Step into the water and drop them there all at once! We will pull you aboard!"

Will this man do it?

Will he venture into the river, leaving all his burdens in the water, and join the ship on a journey that will require only that he remain aboard the boat? Or, will he let the ship pass, and die in his despair?

Such is the human condition.

We decide on account of some foolish attachment, that we prefer our sins, the stones, to the ship, the Church that our Lord has prepared for us that we might journey full sail in the river of his love.

We fear that by stepping into the water we will lose far more than these sins, these rocks, these things to which we've affixed so much attention and affection.

We fear likewise that we will lose ourselves.

Who would we be without these things? Without these attachments, these pleasures, these worldly delights that all at once ignite our passions, but weigh us down to the point of despair?

The idea of stepping into the river, dropping all our burdens, seems too great a gamble.

After all, the river could just as easily claim an entire person as it does a boulder. To lose these attachments, these burdens, we think, will leave us without meaning, as good as dead.

Thus, we must be dissuaded of such attachments, and likewise of our fear.

We must realize the choice before us is as it was for this man at river's edge: to die in despair in the mud at river's edge, or to die to oneself, in the water.

In either case, there is a death.

But one kind of death comes with a promise of rescue, a promise that offers true hope that we will finally reach the infinite ocean of mercy by sailing in the current of His love.

This is a death that leads to a life far more abundant than what we’ve ever known before.

It is only by stepping out into the water that the captain of the ship will rescue us from our watery grave and pull us into the ship. And we can only board the ship if we are willing to leave behind the heavy burdens, the stones, the sins of the flesh, to which we've grown so attached.

Only by boarding the ship could this man's journey continue as one journey, the very course of the river itself!

It is only in the surrender of all things, to love, that we can truly be pulled along by the great current of grace, that leads always to infinite joy.

Only a fool would die for a rock.

It is not much of a choice, is it?

Should we continue dragging these rocks around, until weary of our efforts, we die in the mud? Even if we might die so near, at river’s edge, admiring the river from afar, it remains a death in the mud.

Or, will we heed the invitation to cast all our burdens, every sin, into the unstoppable river of His love, and be gathered into His ship? For only in the ship can we truly, freed of all burdens, be carried onward in a current of true life, never-ending joy, and into the ocean of love, the heart of all hearts.