I love the beach.  It is a feast for my senses. I love staring at the beautiful water with the contrast of the sky and sand against it. I love the feel of the warm sand on my feet and the cool water on my toes.  I love the sound of the waves crashing against each other.  It is my happy place.

The absolute one thing that I love about it the most is that it truly reminds me of God’s grandeur- His awesome power and how he could create such diversity in our world.  It is such a mystery to me how God could create this gorgeous shoreline and create swamp land a few miles away.

During this vacation, we watched the crabs come in on the tide and a swarm of sea gulls flew over them and had their dinner right before our eyes. We saw a few try to bury themselves for safety.   As my son and I stood and watched, he asked me “Mama, where does the ocean end?” The best answer that I could give him was that it ended across the world on another beach, with another family standing on that shore, watching sea gulls.  (How else do you answer that?) As we both mulled that over, standing in front of this vast ocean, I felt so small.  Like an ant standing in front of a massive puddle.  All of my problems seemed so small.  All of my discomforts so minor.  All of my whining and complaints seemed miniscule compared to power contained within one word from God.

Job 38-41 is a beautiful depiction of God’s creative beauty and power.  The chapters are humbling.  It reminds me again that I am so small and I can do nothing without God’s creative power at work in me. At the end of the book of Job, when God finally responds to Job’s issues, His words say this:

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,
When I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,
When I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt?'” (Job 38:8-11, NIV)

I would love to escape to the beach every week, but that’s completely impossible.  But it is inspiring to know that the same God that created all that beauty and grandeur created me as well.  And lives within me.  And hears me when I talk to him.  He answers my prayers. He orchestrates my life with the same complexity that he orchestrates the waves on the beach.  He wants to be in relationship with me, not to just be merely acknowledged by me. The same God that knows exactly where the ocean ends knows every detail of your life, too.  ~Shiney