One of my most favorite books is Peace Like A River, by Leif Enger. A wonderfully written story. You might gather I was so taken by it I took the title as the name of my humble little personal blog.

The next to last chapter is as moving a description of the other side of the River Jordan as I think you’ll find. Here’s an excerpt…

I waded ashore with measureless relief. Stay with me now. The bank was an even slope of knee-high grasses, and I came up into them and turned to look back. It was a wide river, mistakeable for a lake or even an ocean unless you’d been wading and knew its current. Somehow I’d crossed it and somehow was unsurprised at having done so.
…
But I was drawn on. Conscious now that something needed doing. I moved ever higher on the land, here entering an orchard of immense and archaic beauty. I say orchard: The trees were dense in one place, scattered in another, as though planted by random throw, but all were heavy trunked and capaciously limbed, and they were fruit trees every one of them.
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A man in pants. Flapping colorless pants and a shirt, dismal things most strange in this place. He was running upslope by the boisterous stream. Despite the clothes his face was incandescent, and when he saw me he wheeled his arms and came on ever faster. Then history entered me, my own and all the rest of it, more than I could hold, history like a heavy rain, so I knew the man coming along was my father…
…
He was beside me in moments, stretching out his hands. What cabled strength! I remember wondering what those arms were made for, no mere reward, they had design in them. They had some work to set about. Meanwhile Dad was laughing, at my arms, which were similarly strong. He sang out, You’re as big as me! How had I not noticed? We were like two friends, and I saw he was proud of me, that he knew me better than he’d ever thought to and was not dismayed by the knowledge….
…
Let’s run, he said. It’s true both of us were wild to go on. I tell you there is no one who compels as does the master of that country, although badly as I wanted to see hin, Dad must’ve wanted to more, for he shot ahead like a man who sees all that pleases him most stacked beside the finish. I could only be awed at his speed, which was no effort for him; indeed he held back so that we traveled together, he sometimes reaching for my hand, as he’d done a thousand times in the past; and the music and living language swept us forth across the plains until the mountains lay ahead, and up we climbed at a run.