The Big Water

Last updated on: August 29, 2023 at 2:36 pm by Beverly R. Green

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The Big Water 2023-08-29T14:36:29-04:00 Beverly R. Green

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Going to “The Big Water”

Many years ago, my extended family took a trip to Savannah, Georgia. I was blessed to accompany my granddaughters on their first trip to the beach. Although one of the girls was just a couple weeks old, the other was nearly two and able to talk about it. We conversed for days in advance about going to the “big water.” We discussed seeing the waves and how they would feel, sound, and taste. I even bought her some sand toys to play with on the beach.

When the long-awaited moment finally came and we stepped along the boardwalk and over the dunes, I told her, “In just a second we’re going to see the ‘big water’!” Excited, but unable to keep our pace with her little legs, she said, “Hold you me,” and reached up her little arms for me to carry her, and, of course, I did! Then we topped the last dune and the glorious, sunny panorama of the whole eastern Atlantic opened up before us! I set her down expecting awe and exclamations. Instead, she went for her bucket and shovel! She didn’t even perceive the “big water,” only the sand that she could grab with her tiny hands and her toys. She was also fascinated by sticks and shells and pieces of seaweed that she found. She had a ball!

Familiar vs. Unfamiliar

I contemplated that for a long time that day, and finally came to the conclusion that the “big water” was just too much for her 20-month-old mind to wrap around. The sand was something with which she was relatively familiar from the sandbox at daycare. She knew what to do with it; she could hold it, she could understand it. It wasn’t until later that afternoon when she saw her mother and me walking to the edge and getting our feet wet and splashing a little in the waves that she became interested at all in trying that out. When she did, she loved it, and before the afternoon was over, we had a real little beach bunny.

We can be like that with God. We discuss Him, we read about Him, we debate about Him, but in the end, He really is way too big for our mortal minds to understand—a Being who operates outside of space and time, the One who created everything out of nothing, the God who is bigger and mightier than the deepest ocean or the highest mountain. So we turn to what we are familiar with, what we can understand and manipulate.

A Case for Eternal Life

After my grandmother’s funeral, I asked my brother (one of the smartest people I’ve ever known) what he thought about life after death. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then offered me an analogy I will never forget. He said it’s like imagining God as a basketball and the world as a piece of paper. The basketball can roll all over that paper, but at no time can the paper experience, understand or receive the whole ball, because the ball has dimensions that the paper does not have. Even if the ball were to somehow pass through the paper, the paper could only receive part of the ball at a time. There is so much more to it than we are able to understand and receive in our flesh.

Being human, we demand explanations and predictions and knowledge, and in very many circumstances, we find ourselves unsatisfied. God says, “As the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). Leaving ego behind, we realize that God is God, and there are some things we are just not going to understand fully. He owes us no definition, clarification, or excuse.

The Big Eternal Water

However, the glorious, sunny panorama of eternity is waiting for those who are willing to look beyond what they can control and manipulate and understand. For now, we are invited to come to the water in faith and splash in the waves.

Lord God, thank You for all Your creation—the things we can see and understand, and the things we can’t. Amen.

*reprinted from Coffee on the Porch With Jesus (2016), Beverly R Green

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