Rivers of Healing

Rivers of Healing

(“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” 2 Corinthians 4:17)

I wasn’t looking for it but stumbled across it anyway.
I didn’t ask for it but found its embrace anyway.
I didn’t know the route very well but arrived at home anyway.
I asked for nothing more than a brief respite from pain and
a friend stopped alongside the road to greet me. I was walking
on the shoulder and
she slowed down when she saw me. There was no traffic so
we talked in almost complete sentences.
Our conversation was private property and I carried it
the rest of the day.

If you have seen me, will you drop me a line?
If you have heard my name will you whisper it just the same?
If you have felt the shiver and the marvel will you share them with me?
There was no surgery that could excise the pain,
no balm to relieve the aching over time that had run away
before I could find the way back to you.
It has been years since I invented a song, years since
I’ve sung for more than one. I haven’t touched my
guitar in almost a year. And the days pass so slowly that
I let them slip away unseen.

I heard there was another way, a place that
took away the accidents that kept us from knocking on
our friend’s front door. I heard the was another life
that looked just like this one but transformed all our
troubles into gold.
I think it was yesterday, maybe seeping into today.
I think it was future, I think it was surrounding the
moment with something weightier than all my
uneasy beginnings. And maybe I could see us
walking our way home

beside the trees

and rivers of healing,

the springs of hope,

the dichotomy of faith and

the silence of love

that recreates our
misgivings into a guided trajectory of sanity.