The River That Remembered How to Sing

In 1995, fourteen gray wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park after a seventy-year absence. What happened next stunned even the biologists. The elk, no longer free to overgraze unchecked, moved away from the riverbanks. Willows and aspens surged back. Songbirds returned to nest in the new growth. Beavers built dams that created ponds for otters and trout. The root systems of recovering trees stabilized the soil, and the Lamar River — which had wandered wide and shallow for decades — actually changed course, narrowing its banks and deepening its channels.

Scientists called it a trophic cascade. The psalmist would have called it something else entirely.

"Let the rivers clap their hands; let the mountains sing together for joy." Psalm 98 isn't simply poetry. It's a declaration that all creation recognizes its Maker and responds when He sets things right. The rivers at Yellowstone didn't just flow — they were restored to what they were always meant to be. The mountains didn't just stand there — the whole landscape came alive again because one act of restoration rippled outward beyond anything anyone predicted.

This is the song Psalm 98 invites us to join. The Almighty has done marvelous things. He is making all things new — not just human hearts, but rivers and ridgelines and ecosystems we haven't even noticed yet. When God moves, even the earth can't keep quiet.