Over the Holiday season I had the chance to take a few days vacation with a some of my team members. The four of us had the chance to spend one night in the mountains and the next three days camping on a beach. This country has some beautiful sights to see; high mountain peaks, deep valleys carved by dried up riverbeds, beautiful beaches, and coral reefs teaming with life. Though trips to see all the beauty that this country has to offer do not come often, it’s nice to be able to take a short trip away from the cities that we spend the rest of our time working in.
The days we were at the beach gave us a chance to unplug and get away from the stress and work and importantly it also gave us a chance to get away from our phones and laptops. We had the chance to enjoy each other’s company but also to be still and enjoy God’s creation in silence. At the beach, we spent most of our time either alone or together, sitting under a hut with a table where we at our meals, snorkeling in sea and enjoying the reef starting right at the water’s edge, or walking along the shoreline.
From the hut, you could see the light area of the reef stretch from the beach to about 70 yards out where it dropped off to into darkness.
Just before lunch on the second day we were there I wanted to swim out to the drop off of the reef to make sure I saw all that this beach had to offer. I snorkeled out to taking my time to enjoy all the different fish that I was swimming alongside of. As I approached the edge of the reef the fish started to get slightly bigger and the coral formations started to get more unique and beautiful. Then as I looked forward there was nothing, the reef came to a sharp end and dropped off as far as you could see down. The water had always been a little murky but you didn’t notice it when the water was only about 5 feet deep, but when there was an entire ocean in front of you the lack of visibility became shockingly apparent.
If you’ve ever stood at the top of a tall building or on a cliff you know that weird sinking feeling you get in your stomach, well it was strange to feel like you’re scared of heights when your swimming in the water. It felt as though I was on the edge of a cliff… a cliff that I could step off but was it a cliff that I wanted to step off? Behind me was the reef, there I could see as far as I wanted, if I got tired I only had to put my feet down and I could stand, but off the edge, with all the ocean out in front of me but only a few feet of visibility, there was so much that I couldn’t see and if I got tired there was no ground in sight.
Now no analogy is perfect but when I was floating there with my body rejecting the idea of going out a step further, my breath getting short and my heart rate rising, I had the thought come into my head of how often our trust in God is limited to the same point where our own strength ends. It didn’t take much trust in the buoyance that had always held me in the water when I could stretch down and touch the ground. After swimming for most of the 23 years of my life you think I would know that the water that I was in would continue to hold me even into the unknown but that wasn’t my first instinct. Likewise, when we can see the path in front of us our trust isn’t always in God, and when the ground drops out and the murkiness of life only shows us the next step, the one thing we will see clearly is if we trusted in our own strength before.
When the reef comes to an end, the water that had the force to lift you before won’t leave now and when God leads you to the edge of the reef, when following Him means leaving your strength and trusting Him not only will He hold you but you will see His strength in new light. When God calls you out and you can’t see in front of you, every step out into the unknown shines with His protection. With an entire ocean to be afraid of the God that created the very water that fills the ocean will hold you, and the God that knew you before the foundation of the world will be more than enough when you can’t see the next step.