A River Runs Through It
Our family recently watched the movie with the above name: A River Runs Through It. It was directed by Robert Redford and starred Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, and Tom Skeritt. It originally came out in 1992.
Skerritt plays a minister in the Presbyterian Church with Sheffer and Pitt playing his two sons. The church has a role that runs through the movie but it is the river, more specifically fly-fishing, that draws the characters together from beginning to end. The story is told from the perspective of Sheffer’s character, the older brother, Norman. It begins with a septuagenarian Norman fly-fishing and the story ends with the same scene.
The setting is rural Montana, in a small town. The boys grow up together, periodically rebelling against their father. Eventually Norman leaves town and goes 3,000 miles away to college at Dartmouth. He becomes the more “straight-laced” brother. Pitt’s character, Paul, stays home, goes to school, and becomes a journalist. Paul is also the more rebellious, giving himself to alcoholism and gambling.
Through the years, when Norman comes home for example, the two brothers find themselves at the river, fly-fishing.
Eventually, Paul’s behavior catches up to him and he is killed. Mother and Father also give in to the ravages of time and pass away. Norman even has to bury his own wife, Jessie. Through it all, the river runs through it. After the movie, I asked the girls what the point of the movie was and what the river had to do with it.
Jewell recalled a quote (she is, after all, our literary genius) by the septuagenarian, fly-fishing alone: “I knew just as surely, just as clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last.”
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I also recalled a statement Norman makes at the end: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” The movie picks up in the middle of the Maclean family’s life and the movie ends in the middle of the Maclean family’s life (albeit the second generation). No neat little bows are tied. Life changes. Generations come and go but the river runs through it all, constant.
So, it made me think. We may not have a river that runs through our family’s but we have One more constant and certainly more dependable than a river. God runs through our generations, from one to the next. God is the “God of generations.”
The word “generation” is used 212 in the Bible. God is the Savior of my great-grandparents and my grandmother and my dad and me and my daughters. At least five generations; four on Rachel’s side. Will he be the God of the sixth generation?
The psalmist writes: “Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord, and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord” (Psalm 102:18-22).
Teach your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren the ways of God so He can be the God of the next generation.
–Paul Holland
