Walking with God

-I'm working on reading that book by John Eldredge (thanks, $5 Christian book outlet!), and I came across this as I was reading this morning @ IHOP, and I wanted to share, because I can only star and circle it so much. I'll get a running start into it:

John is a fisherman, and tells a story about wanting to go fish on some creek area he'd not fished before, and to get there, he had to go along the Bear River.

pg.67-68
My plan was to hike up the Bear to the confluence and begin my explorations from there. But the canyon of the Bear caught me by surprise. It's beautiful down in there. The river flows through a forest of evergreens, some of them leaning way out over the water so that the sunlight comes through here and there, splashing the river with light and shade. The river separates now and then into braids and then rejoins itself.

Now, it wasn't my plan to fish the Bear---I was after the untouched waters of the creek. But when I reached the bottom of the canyon and started upriver, I was immediately met with a handsome run of clear green water just begging for a dry fly. It was too inviting. I caught a lovely thirteen-inch rainbow on my first cast and made a change of plans. I would fish the Bear as I hiked ---not too seriously, because the creek was my destination---but enough to sample the most alluring runs.

The Bear proved to be the treat of the day. By the time I reached the creek, I'd caught a half-dozen fish without much effort. And now that I'd reached my goal, it became obvious that the creek was unfishable. It plunges off a geologic shelf for a mile or so, cascading down with far too much speed to make for good fishing. I was disappointed. The creek was the point; the river had only been tossed in as a bonus. Or so I thought.



Then I remembered something that God has been teaching me this summer---it's not what he isn't giving but what he is giving. We can get so locked onto what we don't have, what we think we want or need, that we miss the gifts God is giving.

Really, though the river had proved to be everything I hoped the creek would be---solitude, beauty, wild fish on a dry fly--I sulked halfway back to the car because I didn't get my creek.




So, another reminder to get over yourself, and see what God is giving you now.