The massive waters crash against jagged rocks forming foaming white peaks of splash. Crash and splash. That’s what it is.
The color of the sea is different depending on where you look. Some places deep, deep blue. Others, the most beautiful turquoise. Even those colors change slightly with the weather and the hue of the sky above.
The tide comes in. The tide goes out. Swells form and then there is calm.
Our perception, what we see and experience of the ocean can differ. Someone down the beach from me can experience a wave I will never touch. A dolphin may come across my line of vision that everyone else misses. But the ocean is the ocean. As I look out from this deck, there is one thing that with all the movement and change of weather never goes away. The horizon. A perfect straight line as far as I can see reminds me that the ocean will always be there. Even when I go home to Colorado and can no longer see it. Even when I crawl in bed tonight and can only hear its soothing white noise through my open window. It is ever present, ever powerful, ever beautiful, no matter what my senses do or don’t perceive.
God. Ever powerful. Ever present. Ever beautiful. His touch on my life will look different from yours. But all of us can approach the mighty ocean and put our feet in to experience what it has to offer. We can wade out waist deep, our toes still curled in the sand trying to hang on to the ground that we trust and know. Or we can immerse ourselves in the great sea, letting it carry us, our feet no longer touching the sand. Its buoyancy holding us up. We become one with the ocean, feeling its power, moving with its rhythm, tasting its salty flavor.
God invites us in. He won’t drag us in. But He’ll call to us. It will look and sound different to you than it does to me. It might be the simplicity of wet sand that beckons you deeper. It might be the intensity of a crashing wave. But it’s the same Ocean. Our God. Present. Powerful. Beautiful. Always there.
Can you hear it?
Philippians 3:12-14 -The Message – I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
