Little Rivers

Walking down Sweetwater Springs Boulevard just as Tuesday's storm was spitting its final and another thing!s, I encountered this stream of rainwater runoff cutting a "little river" through the gravelly dirt.

My mind flashed back to the joys I experienced as a little boy in the backyard of my parents house in Lobert Street in Castro Valley.  One of my favorite things to do was to run the garden hose and make "little rivers" in the dirt.

There is a certain fractal beauty in how the water carves out a little channel, cutting while at the same time slowly filling it in with sediment.

After turning on the garden hose, the little river would be brown and muddy, but just a few moments later, crystal clear.  Someone had told me that water only need travel a certain number of yards before it has become purified, and that "fact" was something that I really marveled at.  The Creator has made his earth self-cleaning... a magnificent feat. 

When my parents caught me running the garden hose just to "play", they chastised me.  It was a waste of water, something that I didn't fully comprehend at the time, even though I had been told that we were in something they called a "drought".

Watching water is something most people find fascinating, I venture to say.  It's pretty and it makes a nice sound when it's running fast enough to "gurgle" or "babble".

If just a little boy can be fascinated by watching such a tiny little river, no doubt Jah the Creator enjoyed seeing the mighty rivers and streams of his earthly creation, and perhaps one can detect this particular facet of his feelings when he says that he "saw that [it was] good" (Genesis 1:9).

When I became a teenager, my parents allowed me to get a pump and pipe water from the bottom of a fishtank to the top of a long section of plastic raingutter that I had bolted to my bedroom wall at a slight angle.  The water ran through rocks and gravel and the roots of spider plants I had placed there, and by the time it poured back into the top of the fishtank at the other end, it was clean.

Everyone was happy.  The fish looked healthy and well oxygenated, the spider plants thrived in the form of a beautiful green jungle overhanging the sides of the gutter, and I was pleased because I had a natural filter that kept the water clear.  Of course I was also satisfied because, as Jesus said, and man has come to know from experience, "there is more happiness in giving", even if the recipients are mere green plants and freshwater fish.

Reflecting on this helps me more deeply appreciate why Jehovah is "the happy God" (1 Timothy 1:11) because of everything on this beautiful earth that he has given us.