Edges of His Ways

Living, as we currently do, ‘beira mar’ , as we might say in Portuguese ('by the sea’ ), it is wonderful to walk the long strand, linger by rock pools, gaze on the ever changing face of the ocean. And the one constant in all of this landscape is the horizon, steady and straight, in varying shades of grey and blue, and a permanent indicator of the expanse that lies beyond. This body of water, Portstewart Bay, is directly connected, via Atlantic and Arctic, to the immense and impenetrable thing we call “oceans”, deep and dark and filled with all manner of wonders.  

Which is why the above phrase resonates with me this evening.  I find all sorts of joy and pleasure in these ‘edges’ of the ocean. It gives me a small but real indication of the wonder, the awesomeness, the power that lies beyond, out there in the depths, yet it is absolutely nothing in comparison to the reality of what the ocean is really like. That it what it is like with our understanding of God. We can experience Him as a reality in our daily lives, yes, but we only touch the very outer fringes of all that He is.

Job expresses it like this in Chapter 26:14. After he had poetically celebrated God’s presence in the natural world ‘stretching out the northern skies over empty space, wrapping up the water in rain clouds, and marking out the horizon over the face of the waters, he draws it all to a conclusion by saying

  - “these are but the edges of his ways - how faint we hear the whisper of them’’

So as I enjoy these walks with the vista of Donegal and, now and then, a faint glimpse of Scotland, the oceans call me to an experience deeper and richer. C S Lewis once likened us weak hearted humans to “ignorant children who want to go on making mud pies in a slum because they cannot imagine what is meant to have a holiday at the sea”.  Would that God would create in me a hunger for the depths of a greater and deeper understanding of all that he is.