I enjoy the ocean. Some of my earliest memories are of the Jersey shore and the crashing surf. Our family went to the Jersey shore each spring before it was warm enough to swim and nearly each weekend until one last time each fall after all the boardwalk stores had boarded up. We would sit and look longingly at the waves as I inwardly both remembered the summer and planned ahead to the next year.
The lapping of waves or the roar of surf sustains me. The college I attended was located in a grand seven story hotel complex on Hollywood Beach in Florida. My fifth floor dorm room looked out on the Atlantic and one of the best beaches of the Gold Coast.
I suppose it is safe now to admit that I left my windows open at night – with the AC cranked down low, of course – drifting off the sleep to the sound of lapping waves.
Prior to college graduation I lived a block from the beach for a summer. Each day my friend John and I lived the life of a beach bum, working a night shift parking cards at a beach resort and our days at the beach.
For the past 30 years, my home has been in the Florida Keys. Nearly every morning I have been energized by the morning sun rising over Whale Harbor Bridge on my way to work. Some mornings the colors or the sky gave me pause. Often during the summer months the sea and sky would meet in the same color and the ocean so flat clam it looked like you could walk to the horizon on a azure highway.
I don’t believe a year has passed that my wife and I have not gotten away at least once for a few days sitting at the beach and relaxing in the surf.
How would you describe the ocean to someone who had never seen it? Allow me some latitude and suppose all media were unavailable for use. Could your words do justice to the sound of outer ocean on a beach? Can you describe a cool ocean breeze in the twilight after a day of sun? How about the tranquility of dozing on a beach under a tropical sun?
Suppose you were the person who had never seen the blue water disappear into the horizon where you can not tell where one begins and the other ends.
Imagine I handed you a large glass jar contain beach sand and sea water. Using this prop to convince you of the majesty and magnificence of the ocean, I proceed to implore you to consider a decision to go to the ocean and live.
Would it be a surprise to find that you are not impressed or interested? Perhaps you would smile politely, while handing back the jar and with a quick “push-away” head for the nearest exit.
Suppose, for a moment, the Kingdom of God was the ocean and the jar our intellectual attempts to convey the mystery of Christ. Are our attempts even feebler than a jar of sand and water the ocean in explaining God and his Kingdom of light?
I wonder why anyone is drawn.
Our words are only useful to weakly relate what we have already experienced.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Once a man has seen the ocean, felt the spray of salt water on his face, heard the roar of crashing waves on the rocks can he say he has seen the sea.
I am not demeaning preaching or any teaching of God’s word; nor apologetics, though I am coming close to doing so.
Study, teaching, theology, even dogma occurs at and after the ocean is seen, felt, enjoyed. Then and only then will the words of teaching have life, reality and power. Al else is simply cheap
imitation.
So either we can dust the shells on our shelves or go stand in the surf.
Anyone need some sunscreen?
