There are times when life feels like floating along a great big meandering river: it takes an enormous amount of time to negotiate a long curve and then, after what seems like an age, you find yourself back in almost exactly the same place that you were before.
Arriving back in a place that you thought you’d left far behind you can be deeply disappointing and frustrating. Becoming ill again after a time of feeling better, revisiting a family or relationship issue, facing the same old temptation or just realising that once again you can hear God saying the same thing to you that he’s said over and over again in the past; all these can leave you ready to give up or to yell at the Lord “but we’ve been here before!”
“All that effort and I’ve travelled no distance at all”.
It amused me this morning to read that in rivers, meanders are a feature of maturity. Young rivers cut in a straight line to begin with, and only as they get more mature (and more powerful) do they start to wander about revisiting old ground and seem to make only very slow progress forwards.
I wonder if life-meanders are more likely to be a feature for us too as we become more mature in faith? When I first became a Christian, so much seemed to be easy and obvious, life and discipleship was much more of a straight line. It felt as though I was quick to learn things and deal with things. As time as gone on I’ve realised that there are deeper things, ground-in patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that seem to need a different treatment. Revisiting the same issues and challenges, each time armed with a little more experience and grace seems to be a part of that process.
If you understand this experience of having travelled the long bend of the river and found yourself, unexpectedly, back where you started, this is God’s word for you today:
It’s not about the distance travelled, it’s about who you’ve become while we travelled it together.
Because even if today you’re arriving back in the same old place, you are not the same old you.
On the journey to get here you will have changed, grown and learned. You don’t actually have to respond in the same way you did before. You probably won’t.
And while you are back in almost the same place, this time you’re approaching it from a different direction and with grace and experience in your backpack.
So don’t get frustrated and lose heart my friends, when you find yourself back in old places, don’t believe the lie that you’ve travelled nowhere. Instead, remember that journey, and all the things that God taught you while you were travelling and then look down at the new you that Jesus has helped you to become on the way.
Postcards from Heaven 
This one made me cry, but with thanks to God. Four years ago I was on my own bringing up children and struggling and here I am again, but you are right! I am not the same person I was last time! Hallelujah!!
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Thank you so much for that comment… as you know well blogging is a rather odd pursuit, in that you never really know who will read it, and whether God will use it to speak to them.. And when he does, and I get to hear about it, that’s is sooooo good. x
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So encouraging. Thank you Ellie mou.
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Thank you Ellie this made me cry, I feel like I’ve been meandering for a long time, very alone and lonely. But you have reminded me that in fact my beloved is with me, and even if I feel l am just the same as I was, the truth is I actually am not and there is growth and change coming out of it.
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Jill my lovely friend, I see Jesus at work in you and through you ALL the time. He is sooo with you xxx
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Thank you. A friend sent this to me because she knew I have been begging God for “perspective” on this journey that feels like it is way too long sometimes. Thank you for being faithful to post what He gives you. This was water for my soul today.
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Thank you stonescry. you are soo welcome. Welcome to postcards from Heaven! And thank you for taking the time to tell me. Because if God uses each postcard to speak to and bless just one person, then it was so worth the effort of writing it. Yours in him, Ellie x
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I love your postcards and your blog, they are not always read immediately – I sometimes save them for a quiet moment… I didn’t read this one until Monday, and like so many of the other commenters, I cried. 8 years ago I suffered with post viral fatigue, and it seems to be an illness that recurs and ‘tail ends’ other ailments. On Sunday night I got very frightened that my unwelness wasn’t simply a tail end, but that it was back! I don’t know if it is, and won’t probably for several weeks, but the meander gave me a glimmer of hope of God’s perspective.
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Thanks Becky. I know that fight as I’ve done a few rounds with post viral fatigue myself and I know the fear of it recurring very well. But it’s beautiful that when the fear rises up God can find a way to bring you a new hope-filled perspective. May God bring you quick healing, and bless you in the meandering too. Ellie x
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