THE GREATEST
RIVER
WHAT is the greatest river in the world? No, it is
not the Amazon or the Father of Waters. There is a stream
mightier far than they. Its tributaries are more widespread,
its sources more sure, its flow more steady and benign than
of any river named on the map. Our daily life depends on it
more directly than that of the Egyptians on their sacred
stream.
No human being has ever traced all the streamlets of
this river system or computed the volume of its flow; yet
every one of us daily drinks at its brim, though we. see it
not. And no wise man yet has completely explained the
miracle of a river that flows in opposition to gravitation.
The river of sap is the greatest river on earth. It
staggers human comprehension even to think of the multiplied
millions of tons of water laden with plant food that daily
rise from the hidden springs of earth, against gravitation,
to the tip alike of the inch-high desert flower and the
two-hundred-foot sequoia. Every plant has its juice, every
fruit its wine--all rills of the great river. Noiselessly,
without eddy or freshet, flood or cataract, this river of
life rises from the fountains of the great deep. Outdoing
the river of Eden which was parted into four heads, this
beneficent tide parts into as many heads as there are leaves
on earth—and who has counted the grass blades? And it is no
meager rill that flows into the stout walled reservoir
plants of and regions. So overflowing is the sap that in
some trees, like the Carolina poplar which sheds its leaves
long before frost, when the leaves fall, great drops of sap
follow them; and we think it raining under the tree under a
clear sky.
But the greatest marvel of this greatest river is not
its volume but its timing. Moving without ceasing around the
torrid middle of the globe, in the temperate zones it ebbs
and flows. Before autumn comes, it is receding into its
unknown springs. But come February in Tennessee; and some
warm morning we become aware that the black and gray mass of
tree silhouettes on the hillside has turned an elusive
yellow and orange and maroon. "The sap is rising," we cry in
ecstasy. The divine Timekeeper, whose word is pledged that
"cold and heat ....shall not cease," has given His inaudible
fiat, and His stream is flowing up.
"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: Thou
greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of
water:... and the little hills rejoice on every side." Psalm
65:9, 12.
While we wait for the new earth, watered visibly by
the pure river of water of life from the throne of God, let
us praise the Creator for His River of Life now and join the
little hills in joy as their twigs dress themselves in
shimmering sap-fed colors before they burgeon into the
foliage of summer. |
