As I walked home one night from a soaking prayer evening, the world around looked like it had been soaking in God’s love too. All was still, a perfect reflection, tinted golden.
The scene that met me the next morning was completely different.
Winds whipped dark water into jagged whitecaps. Even when I managed to peek between strands of hair that whipped across my face, blinding me, I couldn’t see a single reflection. Not even a broken one. Only rough turmoil.
I ran anyway, leaning hard into the wind that resisted every stride.
Rounding the corner, I saw numerous small boats anchored out in the deep water, well away from the shore. I watched one boat as wave after wave threatened to roll over it, then tilted the bow up and rolled underneath, threatening to dunk the stern. The little boat stayed afloat.
At first I felt sorry for whoever might have been on those boats. All that rolling. I began to feel seasick just watching.
But I rounded another corner and changed my mind. What’s a little seasickness once you see a boat that sits tilted, fixed and unmoving, gripped by the rock on which it has run aground? One wave after another hit hard, sending spray over the boat that shuddered and groaned but could not roll, could not rise and fall with each wave. Each wave pounded and tore and fractured the boat a little more as it sat, fixed and helpless, in the shallows.
When winds rise, I often forget that deep water is safer. I fear the waves, the rolling seasickness of change. It’s not hard to imagine myself spread eagle, clinging with all my might to a slippery black rock, trying to keep myself safe while the waves pound me to pieces.
But slowly I’m learning that the real danger isn’t the waves at all, but my clinging to control, to supposed security, when winds rise.
Slowly I’m learning to hear in the voice of the wind the summons to move out of the shallows, out of the clinging to the familiar, the apparently secure, out into the deep, deep love of Jesus where alone we are safe.
“Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me
Underneath me, all around me
Is the current of your love
Leading onward, leading homeward
To your glorious rest above.” (Samuel Francis)
It’s funny but when I read this, I thought of the disciples out in the storm on the boat….I thought of Jesus being in charge of the storm and I actually felt comfort, remembering that He is in control. There is nothing to fear! Thanks Carolynn. X
Lovely reminder! Thanks, Heather!
Again, wow! I downloaded this song because of you reminding me of it. So scary at times yet much safer. I too think I would be clinging to the rock and am often clinging to control or security in the wrong place. I feel like I am a bit in the deep now and lacking security in my normal sense but this picture helps me. Thank you for the reminder!