The Stream

TIME.  It is, as the hymn* says, an ever-rolling stream tumbling along toward an eventual destination: eternity.  And yet, it breaks down into increments of decades, years days, hours, minutes, seconds.  We count time.  We live it one little piece at a time.

When we look back at those pieces, we can see what we’ve become; what we’re becoming.

Today Fritz and I were privileged to visit for 8 hours straight (no stopping!) with an old friend we hadn’t seen in 11 years.  It was a sweet reunion.  Time had changed all three of us, and yet in ways (mystically as well as obviously) that only drew us closer together.  The stream had carried us a bit father downstream, and the perspective from our respective vantage points was encouraging, motivating, and inspiring.

Pastor Bob had walked with us through the last years of Fritz’s parents’ lives, as well as their deaths and burials.  Now we all had new things to share, as well as new understandings of old things.   Emerging sanctification.

I came away motivated and inspired by Pastor Bob’s example.  His life has been far from easy, but rather anointed.  I was reminded that discipleship is not an academic pursuit, or project, or some add-on, but a lifestyle.  It is a way of living with Jesus, one-day-at-a-time, as the ever-rolling stream keeps churning.  Today.  The stream.  Tomorrow.  The stream.  

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*Oh God Our Help in Ages Past