Milk and Honey Day 19: Rivers and Living Water

I've always been drawn to water.

I grew up on an island just a couple of blocks from the Chesapeake Bay. It was tidal country with creeks and marsh areas everywhere. We jumped off the pier to swim in the summer, fished from the jetty, and spent entire days driving to the ocean without thinking much about it because it was simply part of everyday life.

Looking back, I don't think I realized how much those landscapes shaped me until years later when they started appearing in my artwork.

The funny thing is that I don't paint the ocean nearly as often as I paint rivers and marshes.

You would think it would be the other way around considering where I grew up, but when I started thinking about it, I realized rivers carry a different kind of symbolism for me. The ocean feels vast and mysterious. Rivers feel purposeful.

A river is always moving. Sometimes it rushes. Sometimes it meanders. Sometimes it narrows into a stream and sometimes it widens until it feels almost impossible to see the opposite shore. But no matter what season it's in, it keeps moving forward.

Maybe that's why rivers keep showing up in my work.

The older I get, the more I realize that most of life feels less like arriving somewhere and more like learning how to navigate the current. We spend so much time focused on destinations that we forget how much of our lives are actually lived in motion. Raising children. Building careers. Healing from disappointments. Learning new things. Navigating changes in health and relationships. Growing into people we weren't ten years ago.

Very little of life is static. Like a river, its always moving forward in ways you have no control over.

You can't rush it and you can't hold onto a particular stretch of water. By the time you reach down to touch it, it has already moved on. There is something both frustrating and comforting about that. Frustrating because most of us would like a little more control over the timeline. Comforting because even when growth feels invisible, movement is still happening.

I think that's one of the reasons rivers appear so often throughout Scripture.

The Bible begins with a river flowing through Eden. The Promised Land was sustained by rivers and springs. The prophets spoke of water flowing into dry places. Jesus described Himself as living water, and Revelation ends with the river of life flowing from the throne of God.

Water is one of the most consistent symbols in Scripture because life depends on it.

Without water, things die.

With it, things flourish.

I've always loved the phrase "living water" because it implies movement. Living water isn't stagnant. It flows. It refreshes. It carries life wherever it goes. There is something deeply hopeful about that image, especially during seasons that feel stuck.

A river reminds us that movement is still happening even when we can't see much changing on the surface.

The waterfalls that appear in my work connect to that idea in a slightly different way.

Waterfalls are dramatic. Beautiful. Sometimes peaceful and sometimes powerful enough to shake the ground beneath your feet. But they represent change. Overflow. Outpouring. They remind us that the source is still flowing.

One of the recurring images in this collection is water flowing from clouds. On one level, it isn't particularly strange. Rain falls from clouds. Water has always connected heaven and earth through the natural water cycle.

But I think the image resonates with me because it points toward something deeper.

Provision has a source.

Hope has a source.

Life has a source.

The water moving through the landscape isn't disconnected from where it began. It's carrying something forward.

That idea sits underneath a lot of the Milk and Honey collection.

The wheat fields represent abundance. The bees represent diligence and community. Honey represents sweetness and provision. Rivers represent movement and outpouring. .

They remind me that life is not a series of arrivals. It is a journey. One that keeps moving through seasons of growth, loss, waiting, harvest, and renewal.

And maybe that's why I keep painting them.

Because rivers understand something we all need to remember from time to time: just because you haven't arrived yet doesn't mean you're standing still.

“Joy Runs Like A River” by Bek Harris