Even Superheros need a Break

I love the ocean. One (the main) reason I moved to California was to be close to it. We spend a long week there every year and my hope is to someday live closer. Sacramento is only a couple of hours away, but to walk out my door and be there would be nice.

Funny thing about the ocean (for me) is that as much as I love it, the smell, the sound, the feel, the spray, the sand, the wind…all of i t - I’m slow to get in. Everytime. My wife will run in, usually dive in and go for it. Me, I’m slow; I’ll walk and get my knees wet maybe and slowly glide in over the period of hours. I think once I actually RAN and dived in. Once in 10 years of visits.

I’ve been reading excerpts from Lewis’ “A Slip of the Tongue” (from The Weight of Glory) and he wrote about the ocean and how our interactions with it are much like how we approach God. How my (and he is talking to me) desire to know God is much like my desire to run, dive in and swim out past the breakers and swim in the presence of God, yet I stumble, faulter or hesitate. I love how Lewis described how we much prefer to be tethered to shore (as a safety line) or just play and splash and dabble in the water.

But that learning to swim is better. The splashing and dabbling is to hold onto or control things “temporal.” The now seems so much more important, doesn’t it? Yet, it is when we go out and get caught up in the vastness of the ocean we find what brings joy. Because it is ourselves that God wants, not our time or our goals or our prayers even, really — but ALL ourselves.   He wants us to dive in.  Still it seems our earthly perspective is that the shore is safer, to be tethered is better. Actually that’s what our enemy is suggesting each day as we weigh our desires, goals and aspirations — he wispers, “hold to the shore, be tied for safety.”

I might be comfortable on shore, or even with my current ability to swim…but I think I need to let go of the tether and take some more lessons.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 9:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.