the low places

The wooded and unpaved road that I walk most mornings leads gradually downward. At the very bottom of the path a babbling brook passes under the roadbed and provides a musical backdrop to the forest setting. There are some very dark mornings when I cannot see the brook before I first hear it. It is a reassuring sound and presence. The roadway quickly climbs as I head over the creek. On either side of the road the land rises. It occurred to me that it is in the low places that we often find the water. And where we find the water we often find special beauty...whether the music of a stream flowing over rock, or of a pond where surrounding hills shed their rainfall, or of a powerful river that heads purposefully to its home in the ocean. When we stand on the high places, like mountain ridges, we have a sense of grandeur and vision and we can realize how vast life is and how small we are. But we often find ourselves in low places and it is good ro remember when we are surrounded by hills that are higher than our lives and problems seem to overwhelm, the low places are where we find the sweet water with music to encourage and mirror surfaces to reflect and refresh.

Psalm 104:¹⁰ You make springs pour water into the ravines,
so streams gush down from the mountains.