Behind my house is a small pond – at
30 feet deep or so, it's not tiny, but at the same time you wouldn't
want to put anything bigger than a canoe or rowboat into it, either.
Living near a pond with 4 small children is an adventure all its own
– once you get past the (critical) safety instructions, there all
all kinds of precious childhood joys to be had: swimming, building
your own boat and seeing if it floats, leaping off the diving board
leftover from days gone by, fishing, digging in the sand at the edge,
observing the animal life of the pond (laughing at the heron!), ice
skating in winter.
And I love the pond, desperately.
There's no better way to start a
morning than curled up with a cup of hot coffee, watching the fog
burn off the water and the whole back yard wake up. There's no better
way to watch the latest meteor shower than curled up in warm blankets
with my favorite 1st grader, way past bedtime, lying flat
on the sandy bank. There's no better way to spend a lazy summer
afternoon trying to skip rocks across the surface and sharing in the
joys of neighbor children laughing with my own.
But there's some mystery around the
pond, too (actually, for a born-and-raised city kid like me, there
are many mysteries about the pond, I'm learning!). But the chief
mystery was this: The pond is not creek-fed at all, and yet it acts
like it is – no pond scum on
the surface, healthy fish life, clean water. For the longest time, I
couldn't figure it out.
After asking some
questions of the neighbors and poking around a little more, though, I
found the answer to my question: The pond is fed, regularly and
consistently, by an under-ground spring. It wasn't originally a
“natural” pond at all, but a gravel bed, dug up as a side
business, and abandoned when the diggers hit the unstoppable spring.
And over several
days of coffee-gazing following that revelation, it hit me: I know
some people who function just like my pond! Seemingly un-fed by
“normal” sources, they continue to display fresh energy, patient
love, unswerving faith that defies the laws of logic. People who come
near them are refreshed, renewed, made better. What is their secret?
An underground
Spring.
They are connected
to their creator, the designer of Life, our eternal Source of energy
and strength and courage and love. Healed from the inside out.
Walking in joy that has nothing to do with life's current
circumstances.
Peace that is
visible, even when it's invisible.
