Power in Patience

There is power in patience.
Rivers are my witness:
The Colorado,
for six million years,
carves the Grand Canyon.

Here at home,
in NC and TN,
the French Broad
slices through the Appalachians,
for 300 million years,
smoothing, nourishing the landscape.

Yes, God often comes
as lightening or quake,
but more often, most often,
with a river's patience,
with a river's persistence,
wearing down our barriers,
flooding our hearts
with his presence and love.

There's power in his patience.


Photo: French Broad River at Asheville NC


Browse Nature prayers.

Mary Oliver | The Heavens Have No Fist

Poet Mary Oliver died in January at eighty-three. She had a gift for expressing in words what she experienced of nature. Her numinous encounters were of the everyday/anywhere variety - in the woods, at the marsh, with her dog.

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
(from It Was Early)

Her theology inspired a 2011 prayer that I re-post to honor her memory.

Prayer

Poem

Obituary