Joy Around the Bend in the River

Reading the Bible can be compared to rowing a boat upstream. In some portions of the river, you find slow-moving currents. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make progress, but it does take effort. For many, that’s what most of our Bible reading is like. It’s not very hard, but we have to keep our wits about us, watching out for rocks and low-hanging limbs. We rarely quit rowing in this kind of current, but it can happen.

In other parts of the river, the current is swifter, so it takes more effort to keep moving forward. These kinds of passages require that we lean into them a little more, paying attention to where we’re going. We have to flex our reading muscles a little more, realizing why we’re on the river. We can manage these kinds of currents; we just can’t ease up on them.

And in a few parts of the river, the current is very fast-moving, and it takes all your energy to make even a little progress. You may feel like you want just to quit rowing sometimes and go with the flow. But you can’t do that; you just have to remember the slow-moving current with the gentle breeze blowing in your face to keep you going. If you find it too challenging to keep rowing through, it’s better to get out of the river and walk upstream around the rapids and put back in where the current is manageable. Making progress and keeping moving is your goal. It’s why you get out on the river and expend all your effort to traverse the various parts of the river. There is a great reward in making it upriver to your destination.

In Bible reading, we face the various currents, rocks, and shoals that boaters face on the river. And just like in boating, Bible readers can notice the coming struggles and prepare for them, or they can be taken by surprise and are forced to react quickly to them. The reasons for the different currents in Bible reading are various. Sometimes it’s the passage itself. Some passages can be difficult for modern readers to navigate. Sometimes, some customs and practices are foreign to us, and we struggle to find meaning in our reading. Sometimes, some names and places are unknown to us and hard to pronounce. At other times, we encounter passages that seem so irrelevant to modern life that we can find no real application.

At other times, we find it challenging to navigate the currents of Bible reading, not because of the passage but because of what’s inside us. At times in reading the Bible, our minds stray. We may read a chapter and find that we have no idea what we just read. We may even reread our passage with little progress. Why continue if we’re getting very little or nothing out of our time? In those moments, we must put our heads down and press on, keeping the destination in mind.

There are also times in everyone’s life when things are so busy that we find it difficult to focus on what God is saying. Our minds are on all the other things we feel pressure to accomplish. At those times, we can just slow down and find some slow-moving current, knowing that things will settle down eventually, and we can get back into the faster-moving parts of the river.

And then there are times when we are troubled with the adversaries of life in such a way that we would even find it hard to row at all. In moments like this, it is easy to quit, but this is precisely the time we need our reading the most. We can shift off our plan and go to those places that speak best to what we’re struggling with in the moment. During these times, it may sometimes be best to temporarily get out of the river, resolved to return as soon as possible. It’s not failure or defeat, but merely a brief time of rest and recuperation to get back out on the river.

Boaters go out on the river for various reasons. Likewise, Bible readers go to the Word of God for different reasons, but ultimately to connect with God. Our motivation is of the highest order. It is of critical importance. Quitting is a temptation we must always resist. We may have to adjust what we’re reading and when, but hearing our Shepherd’s voice is of eternal significance. The beauty of the whole thing is that He is in the boat with us, cheering us on and strengthening us when we grow weary. It is for us that we do it, but ultimately it is for Him because we know that there is great joy just around the bend in the river.