For all practical purposes I was going to try to remain in chronological order. Now I’m not…and I hope that that doesn’t mean that I have ceased to be practical. For urgency’s sake I’m going bust into realtime here briefly. Yesterday morning I woke up with the phrase, “God is an endless ocean” going through my head; which took me back to a time a couple of years ago.

I was on a plane flight (Frontier Airlines), and I was sitting in the numb flight existence when I had a picture in my mind’s eye of a man in an ocean. He was out there in this vast expanse of water and he was holding a nalgene bottle. Then I pictured the man taking his nalgene bottle and scooping it full of water. Then he held up his bottle and yelled, “I have the ocean here!” The picture was sort of ludicrous when I thought about it. Here you have this man in the ocean and he arrogantly holds his bottle thinking that the ocean was something that he possessed. At the realization of this picture I heard God tenderly speak, saying, “This is what people try to do with me. They try to bottle me and strut saying ‘We’ve got God here’ when really all they have is a bottle of salty water! They are swimming in the ocean, but they won’t lose themselves in that realization.” I sat in awe, and a little broken for the rest of the flight; knowing full well that I have done this. I have tried to confine God with my finite mind, and still have a habit of doing again and again if I’m not careful. Lately I’ve been swimming in the mystery of God. Yesterday I led a devotional worship set at where I work (IHOP-ATL), and right before I wrote a song about it, saying:

Ocean Deep
By Joel Bidderman (c) 2005 Joel A Bidderman

Tossed and turned
I look at You through crooked seams
Found swimming
I splash around You loving me
So caught and known
A thousand hopes drawing me deep
Deeper than I can see

 

Your love
Is an ocean deep and strong
Your mercy
Like a river fierce and long
You’ve captured me in this current’s mystery
As I am losing me
…in the deep

 

Torn and worn
Reconciled to You and me
Grown and sworn
Where else on earth would I go?
Drowning
In the deep the dying me
Finds life in Your sovereignty

God is an endless ocean. Deep. Strong. Wide. Long. Commanding and can’t be commanded. Have you ever gotten lost in creation? Not like taking a wrong turn during a hike and being turned around for a few extra hours. I mean: have you ever lost your imagination in nature. I do it whenever I look at the ocean. It’s just so stinking big that I can’t wrap my head around it. The oceans that way for me. It’s been raining a lot here, which for this Arizona mountain boy is awesome because I’m used to the biting dryness…and now in Atlanta it’s moist like Marble Cake (it was the first moist thing that came to mind). Yesterday I stood outside with light rain coming down, and felt the infinate impact in my finite existence. Not just that water was flowing from the sky, which in itself phenomenal, but that the One who made all of this and me scandalously loves me. It’s a love so deep that all else is fading away.

Let go of your nalgene bottles and enjoy the sea.