Can You See the Ocean Beyond the Waves?
Our heavenly Father has too many amazing traits to list them all, but let me give you a few examples: faithful, holy, just, loving, trustworthy, sovereign, majestic. One thing God rarely is, though? Fast. He seldom moves quickly, and therefore he often gives us opportunities to develop the fruit of patience.
I particularly like an analogy featuring the ocean because I think life can come at us in waves. If you’ve been to an ocean, you know they have more than one type of wave. If we compare those waves to the trials of life, sometimes the waves are few and far between so we see relatively calm waters for miles. Sometimes we experience seasons with steady, reasonable-sized waves that just knock us off-kilter an inch or two. In other seasons, the waves come at us so hard and fast we can’t maintain our footing; we find ourselves thrashing and gasping for air.
In this analogy, I like to think of God as the air above the sea. He’s the one sustaining us, regardless of the waves and their intensity. He may be harder to find in the storm, but he’s there. The experience of the waves—the trials—gives us opportunities to trust him. As with many lessons in our faith, though, that’s much easier to say than do.
When I think about the longer trials, a couple of my friends who have dealt with infertility come to mind. There’s an excitement at first, an anticipation. Then, month after month, the wave of disappointment comes. It may be small at first, but then it rises. Maybe for a few months, there is peace in the trusting, but then another enormous wave of disappointment comes. In the cases of my two friends, children were eventually born to them, but after many years. I know in the cases of many women, this isn’t the result. The waves may continue to come.
I’ve shared before that my husband and I are planting a church. We try hard to rely on the Spirit and to remember it’s God’s church and not ours. We try to look over the waves to the ocean and not be overly influenced by them. We’re sad when people leave and move on to other things, but we work to hold everything about Fringe Church with open hands. We maintain real and honest friendships with people who feel another church body is right for them.
Church planting can be slow going in our context. We have a small number of large churches and many smaller communities here. Still, we continually seek the Lord and feel led to continue what we’re doing. We know others judge us for not growing more quickly, but we place our faith in the work God is doing in the lives we serve and not in the number of seats we fill.
To expand the ocean analogy further, imagine if we were trying to grasp at and hang on to the waves. This is essentially what we’d be doing if we were holding too tightly to our church body or to numbers. It seems so silly to imagine someone trying to capture a wave and keep it from coming in, or someone trying to smooth it out. But when you apply this idea to a trial in your life, can you see yourself doing that very thing?
I can. After our second daughter was born, I wanted to have a third child, but my husband felt our family was complete. I was trying to grab onto the wave of conflict in our marriage as if it were a life preserver. I felt God’s voice gently say, Do you want what I want more than you want what you want? I was ashamed to admit I didn’t. I wanted my way whether it was what God had for me or not. He taught me such a hard but precious lesson that day.
Over time and through much prayer, I released my hold on the dream of a third child and handed it back to my loving Father. My husband slowly did the same. The story ends with our son, Nathan. If God had deemed our family complete, however, I would have truly accepted his answer with joy.
The waves in our lives teach us something. I write this somewhat hesitantly because many times I have wanted to scream, “Tell me what it is you want me to learn and I’ll learn it!” Yet sometimes what I need to learn is patience. Sometimes, as with the debate over the size of our family, I need to learn a lesson of submission to God’s will. Sometimes the lesson is about an area life where I’m tightly holding on to an idol, and he’s waiting for me to release it.
Sometimes, for all of us, he has something better waiting that requires we walk through the waves to obtain it. We might not know what it is, but we must walk through the trial anyway.
If you’re being pelted by waves that are knocking you off your feet right now, I would encourage you with this: Drink in a huge, deep breath of air and imagine the Holy Spirit filling you. Then stand up as straight as you can, crane your neck as high as it can go, and look out at the ocean. Marvel at its beauty. Count your blessings. Praise our creator amid the storm. Ask the Spirit to help you weather the waves until he brings you to calm, peaceful waters. He is faithful.
is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.
Photograph ©
Photograph © Thomas Quaritsch, used with permission
” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Anastasia Taioglou
, used with permission
