I HAVE been renewing acquaintance with an
old friend. Soon after revisiting my brother's home after
many years, I asked, "Is the Gage Canal still running where
it used to?" When I had lived in California before, I had
loved to look at that irrigation canal. Where Date Street
and the canal crossed, the canal went under by a tunnel. Had
it not been for the cement railings at the edge of the
sidewalk on each side of the street, a passer-by might not
have noticed that he crossed a stream.
I liked to stand by that railing and
watch the canal and think. Coming, it made a great arc
around the base of the hill Pachappa. So close by, this
young mountain shouldered out a part of the sky and hid the
course of the canal. I imagined the canal coming looping
among the folded hills from off toward Saddleback.
"Where does the canal come from?" I asked
the residents.
"Off yonder"—vaguely—"off in the
mountains."
So the source of the stream seemed as
mysterious to me as its destination; for, looking in the
other direction, I saw it curve behind the bulging boles of
the date palms, and I never traced it farther. It came into
my sight full sized and passed beyond my ken undiminished.
My imagination was also caught by the
canal's smooth, self-contained symmetry. Natural streams
sprawl. They fling themselves about across the landscape
like lazy men sleeping in the sun. This man-made,
cement-walled stream never varied in width, never spread
into shallows, never backslid into eddies. As sleek as a
slender lady in a satin gown, it curved its measured way
across the land. It drew no attention to itself like
boisterous schoolgirls. It reminded of the words of an old
etiquette book: "A lady is serene; a gentleman makes no
noise."
But there was power within those graceful
curves and beneath that—silence. That water was deep. Look
up it toward the sunset, and its unrippled surface was a
mirror. Look straight down over the railing, and one became
aware that the whole translucent mass was moving swiftly,
irresistibly.
Many a thought of the power of God I have
dreamed, looking at that canal. The Holy Spirit's work is as
mysterious as the source and destiny of that canal. We are
aware only of the part that flows through our own hearts.
The Holy Spirit is as silent as that canal. Only
occasionally is God's power manifested in noise. As silent
as sunlight, as noiseless as gravitation, the Spirit moves
among men. God provides the water; man makes the canal. And
as the cement-lined canal does nothing for the soil it
passes except where opened sluice-gates allow a portion to
flow out, so we must open the door if the Holy Spirit is to
mold our personalities. As the irrigator hoes out little
ditches in every flower bed, and the soil around every tree,
and beside every garden row, so we must open the way for the
Holy Spirit to permeate our souls. God's power flows through
the world; we determine its course and the good it will do
by opening the gates and clearing out the channels.
