The morning was bright, the tide low, and a gentle breeze stirred along the shoreline. Gulls strutted the water’s edge and my heart soared as patterns of foam danced up the sand while pelicans glided just above the sunlit waves.
I splashed through the pools of salt-water left along the beach from the receding tide. Some were slim and shallow. Others wide and deep. Various shapes and sizes. Each one cut off from the ocean, left to evaporate as the sun rose and the tide shrunk back to the sea.
A glance ahead revealed two shapes lying just inside the ridges of the next tidal pool—starfish—trapped from their retreat along the ocean’s floor. Their source of existence ebbed with each taunting ripple of the next swell. They would bake in the heat of the rising sun and drying sand.
Up the beach I found yet another starfish. This one moving, struggling to make its way out of this death trap, but headed in the wrong direction. I reached down, picked it up, and
placed it in another inlet that had access to the sea.
placed it in another inlet that had access to the sea.
Confused and disoriented, the starfish repeatedly moved the wrong direction. Away from the sea. Away from escape. Away from salvation.
What a vivid picture of our painful human condition. We float along in the sea of God’s blessings, showered with good health, financial prosperity, happy marriage, successful children. Then in a moment, we lose our footing in the retreating tide and find ourselves trapped in a pool of ruts and ridges, with inclines so steep we can’t climb out or find our way back into the changing currents of life’s flow.
A heart rending diagnosis from the doctor. The loss of a job. A divorce. Children caught up in a rip-tide of drugs, pregnancy, abuse, perhaps even death.
What do we do? Where do we turn? Sometimes our solutions lead to greater havoc. Are we doomed to suffer and die in the blistering sun and sand of this journey?
Two weeks ago God taught me a valuable lesson about thankfulness. I rode that joy-filled wave until Thursday morning when the phone rang before I got out of bed. There had been a tragic head-on collision in our community. The initial report, two people killed. No word on their identities.
I sprang from bed, pulled on my clothes, and called another friend for more information. The need to know, to control, grabbed the instrument
panel of my mind. Fear clutched the steering wheel and I careened into the rippled sand and stagnant water of a tide pool.
panel of my mind. Fear clutched the steering wheel and I careened into the rippled sand and stagnant water of a tide pool.
Now when the Lord teaches a lesson, you can expect a test to see if you’ve passed. It’s easy to be thankful in good times, and I should have remembered that Thursday morning.
But I succumbed to worry and complaint instead of seeking God’s calming comfort for me and for the families in our community. I failed the test. I rehearsed with friends the terrible statistics of tragedies in our surrounding towns. I recognized it could be a neighbor or a friend. After a number of phone calls, like the tide, the morning ebbed and I was entrenched in this place of unsettled anxiety. Headed the wrong way, but continuing to run.
I thrashed my way through the day—talking to friends not to God.
Problems multiplied, but still I chose the urgent over the important. Failing to take this burden to my Father in Heaven for His direction, His wisdom, and His peace. Like those starfishes, I dragged into the evening hours looking for my way out of this place of discontentment. But found no peace. No comfort.
That evening, unprepared and in my own strength, I attempted to lead a grief support group. One of our group members has suffered multiple losses. She reported that night the tragedy of another loss. Two of her good friends were killed in a car wreck earlier in the week and a third friend hospitalized with brain damage. She was devastated, thrown back into a murky puddle of loss.
Another group member travels the road where the accident happened every day. She calls when she will be unable to attend GriefShare. She didn’t make the meeting Thursday evening and I couldn’t reach her. Still there was no word on the identity of those lost. Fear painted scary pictures in my mind.
The tally for our community this week—two tragedies. Five people. Three dead and two hanging in the balances. Five families hurled headlong into tide pools of death and sorrow.
At the end of myself my crushed heart was forced to run to Jesus. Finally. I fell before His throne of grace and gave Him my fear, my frustrations and my failures.
I humbled myself before our Sovereign God and repented of turning aside to my own way that morning. And because of His faithfulness, the cleansing flood of His forgiving love swept over me and I was restored. His peace and His comfort reigned in my heart. This time I remembered to thank Him.
How about you? Do you find yourself lodged in one of these devastating quagmires of ruin? None of us are immune. But God stands ready to deliver you from or carry you through each trial, each test and each tribulation. Remember, He is faithful. Your job? To repent from attempting self-rescue and then cry to Him for help.
It’s up to you. God gives you the freedom to choose. You can live in the powerful currents of His love or die trapped in the dried-up tide pools of life.
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