Waves Crashing on the Rocks

 

I find so much beauty and excitement as I watch the waves crash into the rocks at the beach. I can watch it all day. I love to capture it on film. I watch it over and over again as the sets roll in, and each time it is never quite the same. 

 

It is just what the waves do, they form and roll and as they get to the rocks ... they collide and smash and dissipate and reform.

 

Photographers especially love it when the weather is so extreme that the collisions become simply spectacular. 

 

I ask myself “How can I enjoy the beauty of the collision in nature and yet cry and complain when I feel like my life is like a wave?” 

 

I have never considered that the wave might feel like, “oh no the rocks are coming close, no, no, Why, why is this happening to me, this is going to hurt, I will never be the same. And then I will be sucked out to sea and it will happen all over again.” 

 

And yet, the collision, the smash, the dissipation, the suck, over and over again, the spectacular crash is just not something I can always celebrate as life takes its rolls and swirls. 

 

There are moments in life that feel like a spectacular crash, the smash that means that life will never be the same, the collision of what you thought was a beautiful life smashed against the rocks of reality. Times when you crash on those rocks and get sucked into new directions that means life will never be the same. 

 

Those moments when the crash has knocked the breath out of you and you have been tossed onto the rock and left alone to navigate your way back to the ocean, knowing that particular formation of a wave has gone forever. 

 

And there it is, just when I want to sit in my self-pity and feel sorry for myself, I find myself on the rock. The rock that is stable, firm, unmoving, steadfast. 

 

The whole when “I am weak, He is strong” thing, that I believe even when I cannot feel it right now. 

 

^“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-11)

 

The reminder and promise that “I need nothing more than God” and that “He is my rock”.  Those promises we talk about it, sing about and remember by heart are all good until they are all you are holding onto. 

 

When we are gasping for air and don’t want the new life ahead and yet the promise of new life from death and surrender is His central message. If we can’t choose to live it in these times, then what has life been all about? 

 

I walk onto the rocks and find those little shallow rock pools where the water lands at times. The places of calm where the water gets to rest, catch its breath. Ah ... a chance to breathe. But if you stay too long you get mossy and stagnate. 

 

No, it is the living and flowing water, that is where life is. 

 

"Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them" John 7:38

As I sit on the rocks and watch the still waters and the flowing waves side by side I know where I want to be most of my life. But to flow like living water, comes with pain, loss and challenge and joy. 

 

As Cory Asbury says in his song “'faithful Wounds' - I have learned to kiss the waves that push my soul into the caves”. 

I confess, I can’t kiss the waves yet, but I am on the journey.

 

I may never enjoy this crash, smash and collision in my own life, like I can enjoy watching the waves crash onto the rocks at the beach. But each day we can choose to take a step towards this new wave and trust that God knows where it will lead and that He will give us what we need to not only survive but learn to ride the wave again.

 

But as of today, I many never see waves smashing into rocks with quite the same delight.