Something About the Ocean...

SOMETHING ABOUT THE OCEAN....
There are two songs that resonated in my heart while sitting out here and meditating on a cliff by the seaside. One is “Ocean” by Ten Shekel Shirt and the other is “Ocean” by Bebo Norman. It is sort of ironic that they are both called “Ocean” and I am sitting here looking at it and thinking about it at the same time.
 
Ten Shekel Shirt's song got me thinking again about how vast God is and that creation itself call us back to recognize who he is. Maybe the ocean is one of the more convincing aspects that reaches into the soul of a person and grips their very being at the core and forces them to realize the greatness of our God. The chorus goes:
 
Something about the ocean
Makes me rise up and praise
Something about the heavens
Makes me stand in awe again
Something about the sunrise
Reminds me of Your faithfulness
Something about the ocean
And I'm lost in love again
 
I think the ocean is like the night sky. When you look up at the black canvas draped across the heavens painted with pearls of light, you cannot help but gain even the smallest awareness of God's glory and his infinite power, presence, and goodness. The ocean is like a second sky for me. I look out across the endless blue waters like a sheet stitched with glittering sequence that seems to ripple across the horizon and I wonder about the depths of who God is that I will never know but are nevertheless part of who he is.
  
I feel like the ocean calls us to realize how massive God is and that if we could try and explore every part of it, we would never find all there is. It is so enormous that all we can do is fathom at its sheer immensity compared with our own minuscule bodies. I think we would feel the same way if we could approach the sun and perceive its true size. If the surface of the sun was in the same position as the moon, it would fill the entire sky. It would blot out the stars and would extend as far as we can see in all directions.
  
Something about the ocean makes me see God bigger and to re-examine my own proportional existence. When I am so humbled all I can think about doing is to raise my voice and my hands and praise the name of the Lord. Who am I that he would be mindful of me? Gazing out into the ocean breaks down my own self-importance tendencies and I find myself realizing again how I am part of something so much greater. It is as if I get swallowed up in the slow rolling waves of the ocean. They are somehow soothing and yet inexplicably intriguing. The waves rise and fall in perpetual motion and caress the shore with subtle strokes.
 
When I think about the Creator who made this world I am always taken back when thinking how he made such things so beautiful and incomprehensibly huge for us to experience. It is as if we are being shown fragments of how incomprehensibly enormous he is. The ocean gives a sense of the sheer magnitude of this world that we can never exhaust all the forms it takes.

 The second song by Bebo Norman is such an amazing song. The chorus goes:
 
You are an ocean that I can get lost in
The first wind on my shore
You are the sunrise to open my eyes
And the dark night is no more
 
Peering out over the seemingly endless waters, I think about how it is like God's love and how it is too vast for me to observe its entirety. It extends to the farthest point my eye can see and then still beyond. Trying to grasp the full measure of God's love is like trying to understand every wind that blows and pushes the waters against the shore. There is just too much to try to understand it all.
  
The second verse of Bebo's song is especially good:
 
And every time I turn around
There's so much more left to be found
And every glimpse steals my breath away
 
As I sit and stare into the distance, every place my eyes wander is a new place that I never saw before. Each wave is a new feature of the ocean and there is a never ending procession of them that forms unique vistas at every glance. The ocean will never look the same no matter how many times I look at it and every time I look at God there are new, unique vistas of his being that shine forth and I perpetually find myself seeing new glimpses of the Lord that steal my breath away.
  
In thinking about grace while sitting out here, I cannot help but think about the great lyric from “How He Loves” by David Crowder that says, “If his grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.” God's grace is a grace so deep and wide, a grace so endless that we could sail its coasts forever and never desire to find our way back to where we started, a grace so prodigious it shocks our sensibilities and we can only stand in awe of him.
 
I pray, “Lord, help me see more of you and less of me. There is so much that I still don't know and I long to find myself lost in your beauty. You are the wonder of my world and I want to be forever captivated by the parts of you I don't yet understand. Let those things that are yet to be revealed be further cause to trust you even if I don't yet get it.”
 
Disclaimer: Technically, I am sitting by a “sea” but they are all connected anyway. The point is not lessened because of this mere semantic detail...lol.

Song Links
"Oceans" by Ten Shekel Shirt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLMZx_ddFpQ
 
"Oceans" by Bebo Norman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqgl7EYaLc
 
"How He Loves" by David Crowder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCunuL58odQ