Shownotes
Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 102 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.
Life is Like a River
Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 102 of our Trek.Yesterday we studied a couple of analogies of how life is like a clock. I trust that you will allow these wisdom morsels to permeate you and help you to gain insight and understanding. As you do gain this wisdom, insight, and understanding as water flows in a river, let it flow through you to impact others in your world. This brings us to our focus for today as we compare how life is like a river.
As I will mention each day this month, in celebration of passing the milestone of our 100th Day on our Wisdom-Trek, we have a special gift that we will be giving out to 7 of our fellow trekkers to show our appreciation to our faithful team members. On October 5th, we will have a drawing in which we will be giving away 7 Wisdom-Trek t-shirts. There is an entry form on the main Base Camp page of Wisdom-Trek.com, where you can enter once per day throughout the month of September. Thank you so much for coming along with us each day on our Wisdom-Trek.
We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. I was able to start coating the woodwork in our dining room this morning. Although I did not make a lot of progress in the short time I was able to spend on it, I did make progress, and for that, I am thankful.
It was a busy day of work today with several projects competing for the limited time that seems to rush by so quickly. I personally can’t imagine having a day of work that drags on just waiting for it to be over. Although I know accomplish much, my daily to-do list remains about the same length each day. I have always joked that I will live to 125, and I am not sure that is even enough time to get everything done I would like to do in life. While I do have many hectic and stressful days, I am grateful to be busy.
That is enough about my work. It is time to break camp and head out on our Trek. We travel a considerable distance, and as we continue on, we head down into a deep gorge on a long and very steep trail. As we near the bottom of the trail, we start to hear a rushing river. As we descend further, we come around a bend in the trail and see a beautiful river flowing swiftly before us. Since we have been hiking now for several hours, we find a clearing to stop for a meal. As we are resting and gaining nourishment, we explore how life is like a river.
All rivers start as a few drops of rain. In comparison, our birth is like the formation of a spring on a hillside, which has gathered its water from the rain or snowmelt trickling off the mountain slopes.
As a child grows from an infant to toddler and begins to jabber, so is the babbling of a brook as it gains both volume and intensity. Before long, the child is growing and gaining traits that he will carry throughout his life. The brook expands into a creek with more of a defined course that it follows, leaving its mark everywhere it flows.
As our children grow into their teen years they begin to show their independence from their youth, and they seem to be always on the go. In the same way, the creeks come together to form the rivers that cascade over rocks and trees, forming rushing waters and rapids that are difficult to navigate. Like these streams and rivers, they encounter obstacles and challenges but learn to overcome these obstacles by wearing them down or finding a path around or through them.
Even as we grow into adults, at times there are massive floods, huge waterfalls, and raging rapids. We also learn that there are the periods of smooth and peaceful flow. The thing to note is that the flow never stops but continues on.
Our lives flow from bend to bend. We do not always know what we will find around the next curve. Some tumbles may be had as the water crashes against obstacles. As with our lives, the river changes its course but continues on. Some of the blockages with which we meet hold us back until we build up enough force behind ourselves to break through and continue on.
At times our lives even include sudden let downs and seeming tragedies, but even in those times, we have the opportunity to create impressive water falls as we cascade over a cliff. Maybe you have already had a Niagara of an experience. I know in our lives we have experienced the falls. If you have also, then you know firsthand that the life of a river does not end at the bottom of the fall. The river instead swirls itself together again and continues on now on a different level than before, a level even closer to sea level, which has been its goal all along.
You are closer to your destination after having had a spill, so count those times as blessings and move on. The falls will remain there, in your past, ceaselessly active, but you will have flowed downstream, out of sight and hearing of it. Knowing that you can’t go back to it, you are wise enough to leave it behind you as you flow onward toward your destiny.
Eventually, we as rivers carve wide valleys of maturity in our senior years after which may come meanders that sometimes run back upon themselves nearly full circle. In those meandering times, we may wonder why our life has to double back to learn lessons again, but learn we do, allowing us to flow onward. Just as the rivers deepen and become still, we know that in our lives as we gain deep wisdom, our spirits become peaceful and still within us.
Then, we become mellow in anticipation of our approach to the delta to greet the waters of the sea. There, the fresh and salty blend as the original snowmelt melds into the sea. Is this where the river ends? No, it does not. The droplets of impact that you have made on your journey are transported back to the formation of the initial spring as the journey begins anew through the lives of future generations. Our lives are like a river that flows through us not a reservoir. The living legacy that we create each day should flow into others so that their journeys through life will be rich and satisfying because of what flows through us.
From the creation of humans in the Garden of Eden, rivers were the source of nourishment and life, as is described in Genesis 2:10, “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.”
In the same way we should desire God as David wrote in Psalms 42:1, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.”
Until tomorrow, think about how many parallels you can find between a river and your life. Then, join us tomorrow for another Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy when we will learn why life is like hiking through this world.
That will finish our podcast for today. If you missed any of our previous podcasts, please check out Wisdom-Trek on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spreaker, YouTube, or Wisdom-Trek.com.
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Thank you!
The journal from this podcast can be found at Wisdom-Trek.com, where we also have pictures, tweetable quotes, wisdom nuggets, and free resources.
Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.
As we take this Trek together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- Leave a Living Legacy Each Day
This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy the Journey, and Create a Great Day! See you tomorrow!