Getting Carried Away

Guest Writer – Kathy Legg

His voice was like the roar of rushing waters

 and the land was radiant with his glory. Ezekiel 43:2

The Singapore afternoon hung hot and muggy. But the green tangled rainforest where Kevin and I walked was refreshingly cool and full of moist, earthy smells. This 3 hour trek around McRitchie Reservoir was a favorite hike of his. We carried day packs with provisions: bottled water, dried mangoes, sketch books, money for the tea hut at the journey’s end. But long before the journey’s end we learned firsthand about rushing waters: the roar and the glory.

About half way along the trail we felt the first welcome rain drops. Then flashes of lightning, a deep roll of thunder -- angels re-arranging furniture in the heavens, as someone aptly described it! A sprinkle, a shower, a downpour. We ducked under a vine-shrouded tree. “We’re going to get drenched. But we’ve come too far to turn back now”, Kevin declared, retrieving pens and notebooks from his soggy pack and stashing them into the plastic bag, “we’ll make a run for the rest shelter and hope it clears.”

But it did not clear. The rains intensified -- bucketing down in a noisy baptism from above. We arrived at the shelter, soaked to the skin, water running down our faces, streaming off our hair. Fellow hikers dashed past in the silvery wet, shirts and shorts pasted to them, small waterfalls running off hat brims. I tell you, it was exhilarating drama, all of us in it together, the fellowship of the drenched.

A brief rest and we sloshed on, heading for home, rainwater rivering down the path, cascading over our shoes, saturated feet squishy in our runners. The boardwalk, slippery with sheeting water, forced us to slow down, step cautiously. Gravel-packed paths disappeared under the onslaught of the muddy, twig-swirled torrent. The steel bridge — a shortcut home — was now closed because of lightning, so we turned back and slogged on, feeling kinship with Noah, everything afloat.

Five exhausted hours after we set out we stumbled uphill to the tea hut, bone weary, cold, soaked, admitting we’d had more of an adventure than we expected; recounting how everything we’d planned got re-arranged, slowed down; agreeing that the water seemed to want to lift us up and take us with it; saying what hard work it was to fight its force, to stay on our own path. Yet, months later, what we recall about that day was the sheer power and glory of it all.

It was a risky thing to say yes to an adventure I had no control over. Of course that’s what an adventure is -- where “stuff happens”. Where your initial yes gets you more than you bargained for.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" asks poet Mary Oliver.

Me? My life? Follow Jesus. Hear His voice. And when it roars like rushing waters, untamed, re-arranging everything, slowing me down, sweeping up my unimaginative little plans into His purposes for my life, to quit resisting, but instead to celebrate the swirl and tumble of it all, to joy in the promise that He will make the land of my life radiant with His glory.

Spirit of God, sever me from my safe moorings. Loosen me, lift me to go where you’re going.

Images Source:
Park Trail - Mike Miller
Rain-soaked - Contemporary Nomad
McRitchie Reservoir - Whatsayouvanilla
Monsoon - Top News