What is it that draws you in? Does it instill the same thought provoking emotion in everyone who witnesses its greatness? Can we even come close to mastering its complexity? A combination of beauty and beasts, gentleness and destruction, history, theory, loss, mystery, endless appeal…life…death; all within an ocean’s body.
It has such an allure that millions of people every day choose to live near its dangerous possibilities, plan vacations around it or on it, and research deep beneath its surfaces. I know I am not the only one that feels the ocean’s mesmerizing waves of serenity beckoning me to stand on its shores or venture onto its blanketed shades of blue.
I’ve been to the beach a countable number of times as many others in this world who happen to live land-locked in the Midwest with just a river or a lake to vaguely supplement our inner desire to be around water. I wonder at times if possibly that desire within so many of us is really for a living water?
Before I truly knew what a Christian was, I doubt that I would have ever drawn that parallel, but I think about it a lot now. All I know is that whenever I have looked out into the vastness of an ocean, what I feel is peace…a really powerful calm inside. A closeness to what I knew/know of God that allows me to evaluate my life with a sense that there is so much more than just “here.” It is a place I want to go because it clears my thinking, helps me listen for HIS word, gives me a humbling awareness of my size and HIS. And for those moments I can feel weightless of the burdens I carry by tossing them out to get lost at sea – knowing that HE will carry them all for me.
People will research the ocean’s greatness for the rest of time, always finding something new to uncover, but never even scratching the surface. It’s hard not to find a parallel to God in that, yet instead many just settle for a majestic, powerful body of water that they can see. The living water of a Savior that was meant for all of us to have inside does not sound so hard to believe when I look at the inconceivable greatness of the oceans and the skies. It is as if I know deep within that this world could not have just “happened” with all its intricate complexities.
Try thinking about it the next time you get a peaceful moment to look out into the blue and listen to the waves slowly crash the shore. Why do you go to the ocean? What is the allure? or maybe even ask yourself this question, Why do you stay away?
A Life Starting at Love 
Reblogged this on The Writer in Me and commented:
I wrote this blog “Ocean’s Allure” four years ago, and after sitting through my church’s morning service today; it came to the forefront of my mind. I figured it was time for a “reblog” now that I have a few followers, and have managed to learn how to “tag.” Our spiritual formation pastor, Laura, was speaking on the sermon topic we started a week ago that will run through the end of this month (May 2014). (southbrook.org if you want to take a listen or read) The topic today was “Where is God?” It addressed all the different ways that people try to come up with why there is so much suffering in the world, and how most of the time, what we choose to believe about it works…until it doesn’t anymore…until the bottom drops out and we fall apart. We drop into the bottom of the well, feeling as far apart from God as ever, questioning everything. Sometimes, we stay in that well for a long time. Sometimes, people don’t come out of it. However, other times, the well leads into an ocean, and we recognize that God has been carrying us on the waves the whole time. We feel peace after going through pain, and we see God as the ocean. He is as close as smelling the sea and feeling the salt on your face, but far away like that of which stretches beyond the horizon. He is big and small, all at the same time. We understand for a moment that there is so much more. I hope you’ll enjoy my post from years past. I like the parallels it draws for me…maybe you will too.