There Is A Chinese Proverb that says, “Time is like a river – it flows by and doesn’t return.” The relentless progress, unexpected changes and varying speed of the flow of events in life have inspired many to compare it to a river. Marcus Aurelius on this same subject said, “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.”
One of the most memorable comparisons of time to a river is the well-known song about the Mississippi River where part of the lyrics go something like this: “Old man river, dat old man river, He must know somethin’ but he don’t say nothin’ Dat ole man river, he just keeps rollin’ along; I gits weary and sick of tryin’; I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin.’ And ol’ man river, he just keeps rollin’ along.”
If rivers could talk, think of the history they could tell us. The river Jordan was involved in the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ; the Nile River supported the little ark in which Moses was floating.
In a sense, we are all born as travelers on the river of life, and we have a choice as to which way we swim. Most of the world is floating down the river to death, just as the river Jordan flows downhill from the Sea of Galilee, winding its way to the Dead Sea.
This descent is our journey if we simply go with the flow, but if we decide to buck the current and swim the other way, then we travel uphill. It takes great effort to swim against the current and go upstream, and many give up, feeling like the words in the song, “I gits weary and sick of tryin’.”
Almost never does a whole river change direction, but that is exactly what the river Jordan did when the children of Israel came to the border of the Promised Land after the long journey from Egypt. Do we remember in the book of Joshua how far upstream the Jordan flowed back when the waters were reversed? It flowed back to the city of Adam. When those carrying the Ark touched the waters of the Jordan, it caused the waters to change their course and flow uphill. Since the Ark is a type of Christ, so we, if we are touched by the Lord Jesus Christ, can change our direction. Instead of floating downstream to death, traveling the usual direction of the Jordan, we can reverse our course and flow back to the second Adam, back to life eternal with him in his kingdom.
Many rivers have locks that can lift great ships up hundreds of feet as they travel upstream. In our journey of life, we too can expect to come to locks that stop us momentarily until the water pours in to lift us up to the next level. Once the gates open, we can proceed again on our way upstream at a higher level than before. The locks can be compared to trials or hurdles that we must overcome. While in the lock, we are temporarily stopped from moving because of the hurdle, but as the water flows in we rise straight up, and then the gates open. We now can continue our progress at a higher level, having overcome the obstacle that had temporarily stalled us.
Thinking of our life as a journey on the river of life, with our eyes fixed on our destination of being with the second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, can help us to keep on pushing toward our goal. If we stop, just like on a river, we soon slow and begin to change our direction and float downstream again, losing the distance that we have already achieved. There is no sitting still in the river of life. We either continually struggle to go upstream or we float back downstream to death.
Most of the traffic on the river is going the opposite way we want to go. We can’t let that deter us, for we know our destination, and we keep our eyes set on it. Those going with the flow often feel as the song says, “tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’,” but we feel differently. For us to live is Christ and to die is gain, as Paul puts it. Again it is Paul who tells us, “For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.”
Knowing that we are the Lord’s, we continue our journey up the river of life, confident that eventually we will come to the holy city and the river that was described in the Lord’s Revelation to John, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One