GOING DOWN THE SHORE

Lord, your faithful love reaches to the sky. Your faithfulness is as high as clouds…Your fairness is deeper than the deepest ocean…All people can find protection close to you.

                                                                           Excerpts from Psalm 36:5-7, ERV

We are among those who like to spend time down at the Jersey shore during warm weather. One of the things we enjoy is sitting on the promenade in Cape May watching the ocean, as wave after wave crashes to the shore. Sometimes the waves are rough and violent, other times the water gently laps the sand. But one thing is constant: after each wave breaks, there follows another wave.  

Rick Warren, is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The church is an evangelical megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Warren makes the following comparison : “God’s love is like an ocean. You can see its beginning but not its end.” While we can see where the Atlantic Ocean flows from the east while standing on the sand of Cape May, we cannot see the other end of that ocean. It is only by getting in a ship and spending many days sailing – or flying for hours on an airplane - that we come to the western end of the Atlantic Ocean in Europe. So vast is the breadth of God’s love that while we may see one indication of that love expressed in a granted prayer for someone on the St. John’s prayer list, we cannot count how many other expressions of that love there are. Expressions of God’s love just keep rolling in like waves.

A different comparison of the ocean to God’s love came from Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch watchmaker who saved 800 Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. On February 28, 1944, Ms. Ten Boom was arrested, along with her sister, Betsie, and father. Her father and sister both died during imprisonment.  Just before her death, Betsie told Corrie that “There is no pit so deep, that He (God) is not deeper still.” Twelve days later, on December 28, 1944, Corrie was released from the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp due to a clerical error; a week later all the other women in her cadre were sent to the gas chambers.  

After the war, Ms. Ten Boom returned to the Netherlands and wrote several books about her faith and experiences. Among her writing was this comparison: “You never so touch the ocean of God’s love as when you forgive and love your enemies.” Corrie later met and forgave two of the guards who were cruel to her in the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp; she set up a rehabilitation center for ostracized Dutch people who collaborated with the Nazis during the German Occupation.

Prayer: God, we know Your love is like the ocean. We cannot see the end of the waves of Your love. We also know that Your Son, Jesus, said to love our enemies. Help us to love others as You love us.  Amen.

Carol Rice