“Our lifestyle runs downstream”

This July, Rex and I spent a refreshing week away from it all in Snowbird, Utah, several thousand feet above the Salt Lake plain. From our window we could see this waterfall, gushing with snow melt from a late Spring and summer. At the top of the mountain, reached by cable car, you could walk through patches of snow that turned into thin trickles of water. As we hovered many feet above the ground in a ski lift on the return journey to the ski resort, we could see how the trickles had picked up speed and joined other rivulets. They began to merge into a serious stream that became the waterfall on the hillside, and the rushing river below our balcony that lulled us to sleep at night.

When not on vacation, my husband represents his fishing-related business at trade shows. He met an interesting guy who runs a non-profit organization called “Recycled Fish” that encourages anglers in stewardship of the environment. I particularly liked a quote on his web site, www.recycledfish.org, that talks about:  “anglers living a Lifestyle of Stewardship both on and off the water, because Our Lifestyle Runs Downstream.” This had been my very thought while contemplating the waterfall from the 9th floor solarium – our lifestyle does run downstream. It caused me consternation to think that the clean mountain water might end up in the dead Salt Lake. The parallel was obvious – I didn’t want my own life, at times fresh and vibrant, to end in a lake with no outlet – an unproductive, unfruitful lake full of salty tears of regret.

As a Christian, I believe I have access to the “living water” that Christ offered the Samaritan woman at the well 2,000 years ago. Any tears I shed I want to be tears of repentance that can be wiped away by the cleansing power of grace and forgiveness that Jesus gives to anyone who will receive it. Our lifestyle runs downstream, picking up all the pollution on the way. I like to think that who we are and what we choose to be to others can pass through a Divine Distiller that purifies our hearts and makes us palatable.  Jesus Christ is able to quench our thirst for meaning and value in this brief life. Sometimes we just need a little snow to remind us.