Swimming Upstream

Saturday morning at about 7:00 a. m., a group of men meet in an old barn to discuss poetry, past history and current events. These men range in age from mid twenties to mid sixties. It’s like the “Dead Poet’s Society”. What do you believe? What has spurned your thinking this week? How’s your life going?

This meeting has been taking place every Saturday for seven or eight years. The group’s size has varied from near fifty to only four. It’s not always the same group of guys. There is normally a core of about five or six and the rest vary to an average of now ten guys. No, it’s not a secret society; it’s a group of guys from the church I attend. We discuss the Bible and other current books in light of today’s thinking in order to challenge each other to “keep the faith” and “walk the walk”. This writing comes as the result of Saturday, April 25, 2009.

I want you to think about that often seen animal adventure scene where the salmon are swimming and fighting to get “upstream” to lay their eggs. Think of the one particular scene where they are trying to jump the dam. You see the salmon jump and fall back, jump and fall back, jump and fall back. It seems like an eternity before one salmon makes it over the top of the dam to continue his journey to the spawning ground. You keep watching and you find yourself silently encouraging them to keep going, you’ll make it. Once over the top the struggle doesn’t end. The current of the river is just as strong above the dam as below. Can you imagine the determination and energy it takes to continually work at jumping the dam until you make it over the top; just to find out the struggle is not over?

In light of my Christian faith and current events of the day, I see the struggle to fight the fight of and for the faith and continue to swim against the stream.
Society and government are so different than when I was a boy that the tenacity of the journey is increasingly more difficult. What does it take in today’s society that makes you continue to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord Jesus? Do you know what you believe about the Bible, about God, about Jesus? What is your “worldview”? What set of “rules and guidelines” do you use to fashion and guide your life? Or do those rules and beliefs change as society changes it perspective? This leads me back to a previous writing about “Lines and Dots”. If you have not received that writing, let me know and I will send it along.

Now back to swimming upstream. If you have asked Jesus to be your Savior, you’ve finally “jumped the dam” but, your journey and struggle is not over. The current is still flowing “down stream” and you still have to exert energy and effort to continue your journey, to fulfill you mission. You see… the salmon when he gets past the dam in on a mission to get further up stream to lay its eggs in a more calm part of the river. And as most of you know… the calm part of and river is where the water is deep.

Here’s where the discussion yesterday went deep. How much effort did the salmon have to exert to swing “upstream”? It’s efforts had to be more than the current was flowing “downstream”. How much more? Would it be fifty percent more than the current flowing downstream? Could it just be twenty-five percent against the current? Could the salmon get by with just one fifth effort of the downstream force?

What about your (and my) Christian life? As we see the forces of society flowing in the wrong direction, against God’s laws, how hard do we have to swim upstream? It’s even sad to think that we’ve gotten to this point that we have to swim at all. If you swim at fifty percent you will be going upstream, but at a very slow rate. If you only swim at the twenty-five percent rate it will take you longer to get where you want to be. My thinking is that if you are swimming and less than twenty-five percent, soon you will only be maintaining your position in the river, you will not be moving “upstream”. And as society grows more cynical and devious you won’t even be able to maintain your place in the river. That means you will be pointed in the right direction, but you will be moving downstream. You will be loosing ground.

What is God’s will and God’s plan for your life? Is it just struggling to maintain or does He want you to succeed in your mission? I think He wants you to fight the fight and overcome the dams in your life and to swim as hard as you can to make a difference in your own life and in the life of others. I think He wants you and me in the spawning ground, in the deep places with Him. Do you have a group of people who are discussing the deep questions of life and the Bible? Others who struggle with you and for you to help you over the dams in your life?

Following the Shepherd,
Ron