No One Ever Steps in the Same River Twice

If you were here for the sermon last Sunday, you would have heard me use a saying attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: No one ever steps in the same river twice.

The river may look the same, but the water has moved on. And, of course, so have we.

I have pondered on what could be said of that in the way we read Scripture.

There are passages I have read many, many times. I know the words, I know the story. I may even think I know what is coming next. And yet, every now and then, something almost leaps off the page and catches my attention in a way that I have never noticed before. 

Although I do read a variety of translations, it’s not that the words have changed … but I have.

Years of following Jesus, and the Spirit working in me through all of my life experiences, joys, disappointments, questions, mistakes and discoveries all shape the person who comes to the page. And because I am not the same person I was the last time I read that passage, I may hear something differently.

This doesn’t mean we can make Scripture say whatever we want it to say. The story remains the story. Scripture is first and foremost the story of God– who God is, what God has done, and what God is doing in the world.

But we come to that story as people who are still being formed.

Perhaps that is one of the joys of being a work in progress. We don’t ‘graduate’ from Scripture. We keep coming back to it –sometimes with familiar questions, sometimes with new ones– allowing God’s Word and God’s Spirit to meet us where we are and continue to shape us.

So perhaps the next time you read a familiar passage, don’t assume you know exactly what it has to say.

You might just be standing in a different place on the riverbank.

Colleen