Peace like a river

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you who love her; Rejoice for joy with her, all you who mourn for her; that you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom, that you may drink deeply and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.” For thus says the LORD: “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. Then you shall feed; On her sides shall you be carried, And be dandled on her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, So I will comfort you; And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”

I have often encountered the phrase "peace like a river." Most notably, perhaps, it occurs in one of my favorite hymns, "It is well with my soul": "When peace like a river attendeth my way, and sorrow like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say: 'it is well; it is well with my soul." I only recently learned that this hymn, written by Charles Wesley, derives from a very Wesleyan Methodist practice--did you know that there are kinds of Methodism that are not Wesleyan? I did not--of beginning each gathering with a reflection on the state of one's soul.

I never really thought much about the phrase "peace like a river." It was obviously meant to convey peacefulness, and there is nothing religious people like to use as a metaphor more than water--unless perhaps it's fire. So what kind of water is peaceful? Obviously a river!

However, tonight during a Lectio Divina meditation, we reflected on the text I shared above from Isaiah 66:10-13. During this meditation, I started thinking about this phrase in particular; for some reason it held my attention more than the rest of the text. And what I began to think about was my own experience with rivers.

Growing up in Big Bend, water was not very commonly available, and I definitely did not encounter rivers very often. The only real river nearby was the Rio Grande and some of its tributaries, and in the Big Bend area, the Rio was always muddy and usually quite low. After rainfall was a different story; the desert came alive with rain, and empty arroyos and creek beds suddenly flowed with water: fresh, clean, and rushing very quickly. I remember one specific instance where I was out hiking with my parents and it began to rain. My father had crossed a dry river bed, but before Mom and I could join him on the other side, the creek filled with violently rushing water. I could not get to my father, and he could not get back to me.

I contrast that experience of water with what I learned about rivers when I moved to Georgia. The major river in the Atlanta area is the Chattahoochee, which perhaps reflects more strongly the kind of river one usually associates with the phrase "peace like a river." I have childhood (and teenage) memories of floating down the Chattahoochee on an inner tube, a common spring/summer activity for people in North Georgia. During these inner tube trips, I started learning the rhythms of a river that was more constant than my desert rivers. Here, where the water ran deep the river moved slowly. Where the water grew shallow, the river rushed along more quickly. The shallow water was the more dangerous because it was easy to get caught on a river boulder and flip over. My cousin Taylor had the unfortunate happenstance wherein he cracked his head on one of these boulders in the shallow of the river, and had to rush to the hospital and have his head stapled.

So as I think about the phrase "peace like a river," I think about the different parts of a river. There is no river that runs deep the whole way, quietly passing slowly and peacefully. Instead, the river itself has moods; in one place it is calm and peaceful, in others it is violent and fast-paced. And these natural rhythms of the river are changed when it rains excessively, or when an area suffers from drought. So then what do these texts mean when they say that peace is like a river?

I interpret this text to be speaking not about peaceful relationships between people, but rather of the inner state of one's soul, much like Wesley's hymn. This peace that is described is not necessarily the calm part of the river, but encompasses the river as a whole. It includes the rapids, the shallows, the boulders, the muddy parts, the clear parts, and the deep parts. When comparing this to the state of one's soul, perhaps this text shows that a peaceful soul has moods just like a river; we are to recognize that there is grace in every emotion; in calmness, but also in turbulence.