When the weather gets warm, roundabout the middle of August, I think back to summertime days of tent camping in the sand dunes near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. As soon as the sun got high and hot we’d head for the beach. I can still hear the roar of the breakers, crashing, pounding, and the shush-shingle sound of receding water over the pebbles.
The sound of those powerful waves thrilled yet frightened me. But when I swam far out beyond the breakers, I was amazed at how much more subdued the crashing waves sounded. Then when I dove beneath the surface, the underwater acoustics made the roar seem distant and gentle.
These summertime sounds came to mind the other day when I picked up a tattered old book of poems by Frances Havergal. She must have sat on the beaches of Delaware when she wrote, “On the surface foam and roar, restless heave and passionate dash, shingle rattle on the shore, gathering boom and thundering crash. Under the surface, soft green light, a hush of peace and an endless calm, winds and waves from a choral height, falling sweet as a far off psalm.”
She’s right. Although there’s a majestic, powerful beauty on the surface of the ocean, there is more beauty when you dive beneath it all. You discover a world of endless calm, of seaweed swaying gracefully, of colorful shells and small fish floating by. It’s a world that is deep and quiet.
And when you dive beneath the surface things of God, you discover an endless calm… a world of divine life that is deep and quiet. And just as with the ocean, God reveals a quiet and gentle kind of interior beauty to those that dive deeper.
The Lord is so generous! Even when we choose to live only on the surface of things where often we are tossed this way and that, God still reveals Himself through thrilling and obvious displays of His power. But there is much more to God than what you see – what we all see of Him – on the surface.
Psalm 42 says deep calls to deep and when we dive deeper into God's heart, all the turmoil of waves seems distant. The roar is like a far-away echo like the sound of thunderous waves “falling sweet as a far off psalm.” And in closing, I think I’ll let my seashore friend, Frances Havergal, take you for a deeper dive, “There are strange, soul depths, Restless and vast, unfathomed as the sea. An infinite craving for some infinite stilling. And, lo, His perfect love is perfect filling. Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God, Thou, Thou art enough for me.”
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