Michael and I just got back from a wedding in St. Johns and very thankfully we were able to have a few extra days just the two of us after the wedding weekend. As we were sitting enjoying one of the seven (yes, I said seven) beautiful beaches on the property where we stayed, I noticed a giant pelican soaring through the clear blue sky about fifty feet overhead. He suddenly tucked his wings, securing them as close to his body as possible, forming a perfect bullet shape, then took a very determined, deliberate, and poised nose dive directly into the water below. He never hesistated, not for an instance. He seemed to never think of the sting the initial impact of the concrete-like ocean surface would bring; he was just focused on the plentiful provision and unending bounty that lay underneath. He did it over and over again in a beautiful display of grace, agility, and stewardship.
Then I noticed the petrel...this little bird would very astutely follow the pelican in its different patterns through the sky, but when it came time to crash into the vast ocean below, the petrel would start the nosedive with eager anticipation and intensity, then would start slowing itself down as the wall of water became closer. With the repitition and guidance of the pelican, it would get closer and closer to the surface, yet inevitably would swerve at the last minute, never crashing through to the ocean below, just softly landing on the surface, and every time the patient and persistent pelican would emerge from underneath with his provision of fish and would feed the petrel, sustaining it.
As we watched their relationship continue the following day, Michael said, "what a lazy bum!" I immediately retaliated defensively with selfish sympathy for the petrel saying, "The petral is not lazy, but trapped by fear. He wants to do everything the pelican is doing!! He just can't."
I say selfish sympathy because at times I can be just like the little petral, so wanting to follow the path of our patient, grace-filled, persistent savior to the vast, overflowing heart of our God, so needing and wanting to breakthrough to the place full of love, joy, and peace....these gifts in unending forms...a place of abundance and bountiful provision....and, then the fear of suffering, sorrow, or pain (my brokeness) creeps in just like the sting of crashing into the ocean surface...I begin to look to my own insufficient capability, forgetting that I am under my companion's, my savior's wings where all things are possible... where I have all I need and more...
But, even when I let fear overtake me and I swerve from where He is leading in an attempt at "self-preservation," He is still there, waiting mercifully for me, ready to fill me up with a portion from that source of unending love, despite my failure, then patiently showing me the way again...
This world we live in can be a hard world, full of unexplainable suffering, sorrow, pain, and heartache....just like the surface of the ocean in the middle of a wild storm where waves are crashing all around you, where you see no way out and you can't hear your own voice, only darkness and noise seem to surround, but when you go deep enough beneath the surface, the crashing turns into a side to side rocking motion and the loud noise takes on soft, muffled echoing sound....the pain and suffering is still present, but when we plunge deeply into the one true source of perfect love, a sense of transforming peace can come with it.....and, we see the blessings surround us and these blessings abound as we pass these portions on...loving with wild abandonment, bravely...the way He loves us
"He has covered me with his feathers, and under his wings I do trust." Psalm 91:4
"Therefore I begin to think, my Lord, you purposely allow us to be brought into contact with the bad and evil things that you want changed. Perhaps that is the very reason why we are here in this world, where sin and sorrow and suffering and evil abound, so that we may let you teach us so to react to them, that out of them we can create lovely qualities to live forever. That is the only really satifactory way of dealing with evil, not simply binding it so that it cannot work harm, but whenever possible binding it with good. " Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet on High Places
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