Evening walk at Edward MacDowell Lake.
A line from a prayer we taught our kids after we tucked them into their beds at night has stayed with me all these years. It could be at bedtime praying for tomorrow and it could be in the early morning routine of welcoming the day from the porch: “… help me the path of love to take.” If nothing else gets accomplished, there are few things more important than that — the love of God within expressed in words, actions, and (maybe especially) attitudes.
Sometimes, it can be hard to wrap your arms around what that kind of Love will, should or could look like. It can show up in the routine of things, and in unpredictable and in surprising situations and conversations. It can be noisy and sweaty, and it can be so quiet that no one notices except you and God and you don’t even realize it has happened until afterwards. All you know is that...
...the path of Love is right and good, and it is the Word for your life…and it is really deep—deeper than you can ever imagine. Until you see a sign…
The other night, though I wasn’t really looking for it, I was on that path of Love. In the natural, the path was a familiar friend close to home that hugs the shoreline of a large reservoir of water. Many a time, I have launched my kayak here. Most of the time, silence is the soundtrack that's playing gently in the background. The sun sets beautifully here, and when there are puffy clouds in the sky, the mirror image on the glassy lake can be breathtaking. On this night, there was a kayaker’s awareness of what happens when there hasn’t been much rain lately — the lake was low, as it often gets this time of year, still with plenty of water but with shallow water reeds and large boulders emerging. You could almost walk across it in places. Meanwhile, everything else around the lake — the gently blowing grasses, marshes, and woodlands all looked as they should be.
As I reached the end of the path where kayaks, canoes and fishing boats can be launched, a broken tree with a freshly-nailed, hand-written marker told a different story. Last July, when the rains were endless and heavy, this path of Love was so deep that everything around me was covered with five feet of water. A marker on the tree showed what that would have looked like. It was stunning to picture it while standing there, even surrounded by beautiful woodlands, knowing that I’d be standing on tippy toes to get air. An astounding amount of water, and yet the sign noted that the reservoir basin was still only at 35% capacity! What it didn’t say was that the dam at the end of the reservoir, which was erected many years ago after much of the downtown area was devastated by flooding waters during the Hurricane of 1938, gradually released that abundant overflow to the community downstream. It roared in places and quietly meandered in places, but the supply seemed endless even as the reservoir slowly returned to its normal level.
And just when you think it is all very interesting and historical and weather-geeky, along comes this…
“…And may you, having been deeply rooted and securely grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending with all…God’s people the width and length and height and depth of His love— fully experiencing that amazing, endless love; and that you may come to know practically, through personal experience, the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience; that you may be filled up throughout your being to all the fullness of God so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives—completely filled and flooded with God Himself.”—Ephesians 3:17-19, Amplified
Filled and flooded…and overflowing to the community downstream. It's a sign. “Help me the path of Love to take.”
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