Outside The Box

“The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all.”

You can never step in the same river twice. New waters take the place of old. The river rises and falls, comes out of its banks, changes course. Such is life, and even with the best of maps, there is an element of chance and unpredictability.

These were my thoughts today when I came across an old photo of T-bone and Bufarb, my two legendary German Shepherds from days gone by. The three of us loved the water, and we swam together in many rivers and cold mountain lakes.

There is a deep loyalty and sense of responsibility built into shepherds. If I jumped into the water, they jumped with me, and without hesitation. They would swim side by side like a team of horses, and occasionally, I would amuse my friends by holding onto the pups’ tails while they towed me like a barge. No tails were damaged during the making of this story.

We also had two human companions during the early years of our aquatic escapades. Ron and Rick would sometimes join us for a bit of calculated risk-taking. Looking back, I must admit that often our math wasn’t very good, but fools have better stories if they survive to tell them.

As poor college students, we didn’t have canoes or kayaks, but there is hardly a watery place you can’t go with a truck inner tube and the ability to swim. Little River in northeast Alabama was one of our favorite playgrounds, and when we heard that it had flooded, bad math and the immortality of youth put us right on course for another hazardous undertaking.

Unfortunately for our aquatic adventures, Rick had married young, to a woman with a little dog, who insisted on coming with us to keep an eye on her detainee. Our adventure devolved into wading an eddy of the river that was relatively shallow. Still, the water was quite high, and there were rapids where none were usually to be found. Every foolish impulse urged us to jump in, but Rick’s newly wedded anchor held us back.

After an excruciating hour of wading about, Rick’s anchor made her own bad math decision and put Little Dog down in the water to wade – because he was “jealous of the big dogs and their freedom.” Down the river he went, swept away by the rapids.

To this day, I don’t know if it was chivalry, elan, or a convenient excuse to weigh anchor, but manning my tube, I jumped into the rapids as well. Realizing that my feet couldn’t touch the bottom, that the next bend in the river ran straight through the woods, and there were signs of holes, or hydraulics where rock formations were now underwater, I began to question my decision.

Just then something bumped me on my left. T-bone pulled up alongside me, followed closely by Bufarb, who flanked me on the right. I put both arms around them, and we “gunwhaled up” in a tight formation. They paddled hard, and I steered with my legs as we kept to the main channel and away from the hazards.

Eventually, the river straightened out and calmed down. We managed to overtake Little Dog, and I snatched him out of the water and into the tube. When my feet finally touched the bottom, we exited onto a sandbar and counted our blessings.

Rested and relieved, I began to take stock of our surroundings. Just downriver from us, in a sharp bend, what had appeared through the trees to be a ridge line was, in fact, the largest log jam I’ve ever seen. As high as a two-story house, a massive pile of logs, roots, branches, and rocks stood in testimony to the power of the flood. Naturally, we had to explore further.

Upon gaining the top of the pile, we could see, just on the other side of the jam, a one-story woodframe house, undamaged by the deluge. It was saved by a “chance” occurrence at the last possible moment when the log jam diverted the course of the flood.

“What are the chances?” We ask when the seeming randomness of life reminds us that we are subject to forces greater than our own will and intentions. We never really know what’s around the next bend in the river or how deep the water runs.

It’s good to “do the math” to avoid foolishness, but the victim of a stray bullet is not the fool, only the recipient of unintended consequences for turning left instead of right. We could go mad trying to calculate the chances of every turn. The very young, being immortal, don’t do much math at all. When we get older, we often do too much math and become paralyzed by fear.

There is a balance to be found, and it fascinates me that people of faith seem to find it more often than others. They are more likely to find the main channel in a flood or receive help from unexpected quarters. Some people believe in luck, but I believe in Divine order, as surely as every river, flooding or not, in time will flow to the sea.

We returned Little Dog to the Anchor without receiving a single word of thanks for hazarding the rapids or hiking half a mile back upriver carrying a wet, squirming canine. The adventure was thanks enough. Rick gave up his inner tube soon after that, firmly anchored to prudence and, I hope, contentment. I never saw him again.

Ron and I and a small group of companions continued to push the river, push boundaries and take uncalculated risks. My uncharted course took me all the way to Parris Island where I found a better route, and much better tools for navigating. I still see Ron from time to time for an adventure, and we plan to continue until our rivers run their course.

As we navigate the river of life, let us remember that while we may drift, we are not without a rudder. We will surely encounter hazards from time to time, but it is in those moments that we discover our truth. May we embrace the chances, navigate the currents with courage and grace, and enjoy the journey, regardless of what lies around the next bend.