Thoughts from the side of the ocean...

OCNJ 2014

Everything is doing what it was created to do

When I turn my back on the boardwalk and the early morning distractions of people and stuff--the reoccurring thought this week has been that everything in front of me-nature- Gods created things (other than humans) are all doing what they were created to do. 

The ocean stays in it's boundaries. The waves crash; over and over. The fish swim. The birds fly and forage. The dolphins raise up and blow water to breathe. The sun rises, shines and warms. The wind blows and a new day always begins. New, and yet always the same. 

We mess all that up with our need for change and our need to do things our own way. We try to change the order of things-try to change the way things work. But nature hasn't changed its ways...it still works the same way that it has for centuries. It is still good...just like when God decreed that it was. 

We have messed things up for Him with our arrogance and our insistence on knowing a better way than His way. 

But if what He made was good-and all of creation (except for man) still does things His way...then who are we to think that we should change the order of things to suit our own desires? He's pretty kind to let us continue in our ways. Ways that change us and draw us farther from Him. He leaves us to destroy and rearrange what He made...hoping we'll recognize that we're changing what was once good and turn our attention back towards Him. But mostly, we don't. 

We continue to twist what is right and wrong, we kill unborn babies for our own convenience and hail it as "choice", we twist the natural order of things because it is "our right", we waste what was once in abundance, we treat each other with contempt and we take pride in redefining what was once sacred and holy. And we're proud of the results, proclaiming that we are setting up a better nation. 

But out here-sitting on the beach, with my back towards all that we've messed up, I still see glimpses of the original. I remember how things were meant to be and I'm trying to force myself to turn back around- because I'd rather stay right here...where things do what they're created to do. 

I want to stay where things are right and enjoy communion with the One who made it all. We got it all wrong and have created a mess. 

No wonder He calls us here-to the wide open space of the ocean. We all feel it- this need to be out here, to stare at the massiveness of the ocean. Maybe we come because we need to be reminded that we can't change everything. Some things will always do what they were created to do. They are whispers of a holy reverence that cannot be changed. 

Praise him, sun and moon,

    praise him, you morning stars;

Praise him, high heaven,

    praise him, heavenly rain clouds;

Praise, oh let them praise the name of God—

    he spoke the word, and there they were!

He set them in place

    from all time to eternity;

He gave his orders,

    and that’s it!

{Psalm 148}