The river begged to be explored so, its rushing water on occasion wetting her little bare feet, my granddaughter and her tiny backpacking companion hopped from protruding boulder to boulder under the watchful gaze of her nearby mother, all while leaving a trail of footprints of where she had been.
Then she paused and sat mesmerized by the pleasant sound we’d heard earlier up in the forest indicating a river was nearby.
“Rivers are the arteries of the planet; they are lifelines in the truest sense,” wrote Mark Angelo, founder of BC (British Columbia) Rivers Day in western Canada.
Kindness, which flows from the heart, is likewise everyone’s lifeline.
The reference to “rivers of water” in Proverbs 21:1, according to commentators Keil and Delitzsch, “has specifically in view evidences of kindness proceeding from the heart.”
Like rivers and streams, rivulets and brooks, our hearts are by hidden influence directed; our life’s turns and bends divinely appointed; those joining us toward unseen destinations a confluence meant to be.
I know.
She came into my life a half-century ago and as water refreshes, revives, and restores the oftentimes weary traveler, so did her presence then, and over those many years, and so does her memory now.
How else did I make a ‘wrong’ turn in this summer’s 100 mile backpacking reminiscing journey, only to discover it was the right turn after all?
How else do I smile at the treasures – kindnesses – found on a forlorn coastline than to realize these were reminders of the love we had, ‘hidden’ in plain sight to be found by me?
And how better are we to live than to likewise leave evidences in the places we’ve been and the memories made there, than the kindnesses that flow from the heart.
