An Oceanic Orchestra
There’s something about the sheer magnitude and unrelenting consistency of the oceans that exposes my lack of both and showcases God’s power. In fact, water is used multiple times in Scripture to point us to God’s majestic might and sovereign strength, not ours. Notice two of them:
Amos 9:6
“…He who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth, The LORD is his name.”
Psalm 93:4
“More than the sounds of many waters, than the mighty breakers of the sea, the LORD on high is mighty.”
Yes, the oceans are an overwhelming orchestra perpetually praising God. Think about it—endless miles of water, faithfully moving in and out century after century, all under the control of the Almighty Creator. Never late. Never early. Always on time. As far as the eye can see, the deep, mostly unexplorable, often unexplainable, no doubt uncontainable fountains that cover over half the globe powerfully move along in an unstoppable fashion from shore to shore. There’s just something about all that water that is mind-boggling. Soul-stirring. Heart-pounding. God-glorifying.
And for good reason. Many days I can barely manage all that happens under a single address. What would I do with an entire sea—or seas?
I struggle to keep my week’s schedule on time and in sync. How would I manage the daily ebbs and flows of all the oceans over multiple millennia?
I can barely keep my hands around a few deep issues at one time. How would I manage the dark caverns of the saltwater world?
It takes me hours to craft a single sermon. Yet, the oceans were formed by a single breath, a word from God that carved out these bodies of water we call the Atlantic. Pacific. Mediterranean. Black. Indian. Adriatic. You get the picture.
Clearly, the ocean has a way of reducing me. Minimizing my world appropriately. Diminishing rightly my apparent importance. Decreasing my seeming necessity. Lessening, little by little with every wave, my stature from what I think it is to what it really needs to be.
So anytime I walk the shores of an ocean, my life suddenly, and necessarily, shrinks. And God promptly, and inevitably, grows. I decrease; He increases. Todd is minimized; God is maximized.
That’s what I love about the ocean—it drowns the pride that would take me under and loudly roars the name of the Lord.
Pastor Todd