“I Will Be With You” – Stuart Segall

I had this image from many years ago when fires on both sides in CA. forced the herd into the water where the rancher’s dogs guided them, as seen here. My life these days has felt much like being in the waters, looking for the outcome of events surrounding me.

Today, in a spiritual sense, I visualize the herd moving through the rising water as if guided by something older than instinct, something placed within them by the One who teaches all creatures how to find their way.

The dogs swim ahead, small silhouettes cutting paths through the uncertainty, like the quiet guides in our lives who go before us without fanfare, sensing what we cannot yet see. Nothing in the scene is hurried. Nothing is frantic. It is a pilgrimage made of patience.

Whether they are flooded or burned-out roads, this becomes a kind of scripture. There are seasons when the path we trusted disappears, when the ground beneath us is swallowed by something larger, when the only way forward is through a depth we never asked for.

Yet even then, movement continues. Not because we are strong, but because we are held. Because the One who leads us does not lose His way in the waters.

There is something spiritual in their motion, a reminder that faith is often quiet, that guidance can come in humble forms, and that God’s presence is not diminished by the rising flood or fires. He walks with the slow and the weary, He goes ahead with the brave and the small, and He gathers all of us into the same steady movement toward the far bank.

The far bank, to me, is never just a destination. It’s the quiet place where the journey you didn’t choose becomes the wisdom you couldn’t have gained any other way.

It is the moment when the water finally shallows, and you realize you were being carried more than you were walking. It is the place where fear loosens its grip, not because the world is suddenly safe, but because you have learned who holds you in the unsafe places.

Isaiah 43:2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”

It carries the same quiet steadiness as the herd crossing the flood, the same assurance that the One who guides does not lose His way in deep waters. It speaks of movement that continues not because of our strength, but because of His presence.

I see Jesus, our Shepherd, moving ahead of us through the waters. He does not stand on the shore and call from a distance. He steps into the depth Himself, cutting a path through what we fear, steady and sure.

He leads us not by force but by presence, guiding us toward the far bank with the same calm certainty that stilled storms and opened seas. The waters rise, but they do not claim us, because the One who walks before us knows the way out.

Contributing to many of the resources offered by Plain Truth Ministries, including the CWR blog, Stuart Segall writes from the state of Washington.  He has spent most of his adult life counseling, encouraging, inspiring and uplifting others.