Renewed & Ready: Filling You Soul for the Year Ahead | Week 1

Keep your eye on the healthy soul, scrutinize the straight life; there’s a future in strenuous wholeness.

_{–Psalm 37:37-38 | The Message}

How is your soul?

My favorite trout stream is in northern Michigan. It’s a small stream that isn’t as famous as some other rivers nearby, but it’s beautiful, peaceful, and a challenge to fish well.

Over the past several years, the Michigan DNR and conservation groups have done major restoration work on it. A dam was removed just upstream from where I fish it. A culvert was removed beneath the bridge where I typically step into it. These projects and others have returned it to the free-flowing river it was many decades ago. Recent studies of the stream already show it’s healthier—there’s an increased number of crayfish and insects which will help trout thrive for decades to come in ways they haven’t in years past.

Consider for a moment the health of your soul. We like to imagine there six rivers that feed into our souls

—a physical river, a relational river, a vocational river, a spiritual river, an emotional river, and a mental river.

What is flowing well in each of these rivers for you?

Is something damming up the flow in any of them?

Which one of these rivers that feed your soul is in most need of some restoration?

Decide on one step you can take in the days ahead to restore the river to health—the health God intends it to have.

You have traveled too fast over false ground; now your soul has come to take you back.

_{–John O’Donohue in To Bless the Space Between Us}