Unblock the River of Life

Another post of outside material. I've been in a Revelation mood recently, and it shows. This is a devotion I've written for a PW study trip to the Borderlands coming up next April. I have a month to revise it, if you have any suggestions...
Amy

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

Revelation 22:1-2

A few days ago, I stood on the banks of the Rio Grande as it traced the Mexican-American border. Where I had imagined a roaring current, I found a cracked and crumbling furrow where once water had flowed freely. Closer up to the headwaters, the water had been diverted into a protective canal that ran about 40 feet north of the dry riverbed. It was as if the Rio Grande itself had become one of the parched and thirsty victims of the desert heat.

I was reminded of another river, in another land wracked by deserts and international conflict, which found it’s way into John’s vision as written in the book of Revelation. After describing the decimation of the earth through nigh unimaginable wars, plagues, and earthquakes, the writer of Revelation tells us of a final healing vision, a restoration of the earth, that accompanies Christ’s second coming. A New Jerusalem is established, a city of peace and righteousness, and in it is found the River of Life, who feeds and nourishes this new city of God. It’s waters are never murkied by mud or dust, and it has the power to heal and renew all who drink of it. Indeed, the tree that grows along its’ riverbanks has a never ending harvest of fruit, and leaves that offer up their medicine to all nations that would come to it. This river, and the tree that depends on it, are manifestations of a wholeness that can inspire and renew our entire world. In them and their presence is the knowledge that hope is never out of grasp, that healing can occur, and that nations can come together and share of the same tree.

The Rio Grande has the potential to be such a river of life for the two nations it divides. While I don’t believe that stopping the diversion of the Rio’s waters will wash away with it’s first rush all remnants of the way our border has been scarred by governmental handling of immigration, I do believe that conversion of a symbol of refreshment and new life into another, dangerous and ineffective, barrier between us and our neighbors is emblematic of the way we have warped the land we share with our neighbors to the south into a tool against them.

While the Rio Grande’s current incarnation is a reminder of the way our border policy has decimated the river and torn apart those who surround its banks, such reality does not correspond with God’s vision of what-can-be. If allowed to flow freely once again, the Rio Grande can become a marker of the international partnership and nourishment that accompany the waters in Revelation. If we learn how to create a more humane, uplifting policy which addresses the border issues that dry up our souls as well as divert our rivers, then we can let the water flow freely again. In doing so, we state that the divisions between us manifested in both borders and barriers of the cultural variety are insignificant. We can wash together in the waters of the Rio Grande, eat of the fruit that grows upon either bank, and let it’s holy flow heal the wounds that destroy us.