What the Tide Teaches Us About Faith

The Lord grants his loving-kindness in the daytime; in the night season his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42

I am thinking of taking a trip sometime this summer, although it may not happen until autumn. I don’t know what’s happening with me. There was a day I could spontaneously get a wild hair up my nether regions, toss a few essentials into my rolling duffle bag, and take off on some wild and bizarre adventure. Not anymore. My spontaneity gene has up and left town without me.

Now I plan and plod. I check out long-range weather forecasts and astronomical charts, put my finger on the calendar, seeking a day where the roads won’t be clogged by tourists or (worse) three day weekends where I’ll have to add a slug of inebriated jack-a-lopes to the mix and, since there is nothing that actually stirs the soul, fold up the map, toss it back into the cupboard, and decide that maybe next year I’ll feel more like traveling.

The paralysis of analysis is a real thing. So is depression (clinical or otherwise). Life is cyclical and sometimes we are just so worn down and beat up by the constant pounding of the surf that we find the bank of the soul eroding and washing away like the banks of the Yellowstone in full flood. The psalmist knows this. 

Life – both regular life and the spiritual life – has its ups and downs. People of faith are often surprised to find the feelings of warmth, love, and joy they might have experienced early on ebbs and flows. They may feel guilty when they discover their faith becoming lukewarm or, God forbid, even cold and icy. They wonder if there is something wrong with them, or if their faith is genuine, or if they have some unknown sin that has disappointed God enough for the good Lord to withdraw favor. Ouch!

No. Feelings are real. The love of God is there whether or not we feel it, just as the sun is there when the clouds or night obscure the fact.

I live close to Puget Sound, and there are times I see nearby Padilla Bay lapping the shoreline next to the roadway, and other times there is a mile or more of mudflats exposed by a tide that has gone out – way out. I love the freshness of the salt-air at high tide, but when the tide goes out, blech!

Sometimes the tide is out in life, and that’s OK. The psalmist doesn’t try to hide his face in shame. He doesn’t try to power through it as if it isn’t OK to feel what he feels. I suspect he might even be willing to punch the nose of any peer who suggests he just “buck up” or “turn that frown upside down!” There are three things I get from this psalm.

First, be genuine. Don’t worry about what others may think or say you should feel. Own your life. Acknowledge what’s happening. There is a commandment that we are not to bear false witness, so we need to be true and honest to self and to God. Putting this stuff down on paper or sharing it with a trusted friend often relieves some of those internal pressures.

Secondly, the psalmist remembers better and brighter times. He remembers that God is eternal, but our circumstances and feelings aren’t. “In the night season his song is with me.” The presence of God often grows warmer and more real in the midst of the assembly, so he makes a point of surrounding himself with the faithful, depending on the warmth of their presence to warm his own soul.

And finally, he listens for the voice of God singing. God sings life into creation. God sings resurrection to a cold, dark, dangerous, and deadly world. When I hear the voice of God singing in the night, I know God is calling. 

Unlike the Sirens who called sailors to their destruction in the ancient fables, God calls us to new life, and if we need to rest a bit, God changes the tune to the lullaby we need and, like the psalmist, I find that very kind, sweet, and loving here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)

God Dances With Whales

“Come, Love! Sing On! Let me hear you sing this song – sing for joy and laugh, for I the creator am truly subject to all creatures." Mechtild of Magdeburg

The other day I set about replacing the power antenna on my car with a new unit. The original mast had been snapped off and it seems I can’t do anything lately without getting sliced and diced by anything sharper than a gummy bear. My blood may be O-Negative, but it is positively attracted to anything sharp, especially jagged metals.

I peeled back the carpeting in the trunk and managed to find and remove the two bolts that held the original antenna in place; it all disassembled and came out neatly enough and, I’m delighted to report, without my shedding any blood (yet).  The new device isn’t exactly like what I had removed, so I fiddled with it a little bit to see how it would fit, made the wire connections and, before mounting it, decided to test it to make sure I’d wired it correctly. 

I turned on the car’s power supply, then turned on the radio and – Voila! – the power mast extended … and extended … and within seconds the mast and gear-cable exited the housing! Oops. It turns out the antenna should have been mounted to keep the mast from leaving home. Now THAT would have been a helpful bit of information to include in the instructions, don’t you think?

Warning, do not test the unit without mounting it first!

Life is like that. Not everything comes with warning labels and, while the antenna snafu may be a bit irksome, it isn’t the end of the world. It was assembled by someone somewhere. What one person can do, another can do. I decided not to tackle the re-assembly at that moment because, to be honest, I was fighting allergies, exhausted from all my coughing and sneezing, blowing through reams of facial tissue, and somewhat brain-dead from the antihistamines that seem to stop up gray matter more effectively than yellowish-green matter.

Fortunately, I learned a long time ago not to take things too seriously. None of us is getting out of here alive, so take time to smell the proverbial roses. Life without joy, song, and playfulness is dullishly incomplete. 

Even God plays. The Bible tells us God created Leviathan (a whale or sea monster) “for the sport of it.” Amazing; God plays. God wallowed in the mud one day playing patty-cake with the angels and next thing you know, God created Adam, and then had a rib-tickling idea to create a playmate. Oh, I know you sticklers for the scriptures will say the word is “helpmate,” but the focus of the passage is “goodness” – and for that, God created a woman precisely for goodness’ sake. The purpose of Sabbath (the day of rest) is also for re-creation. God did not make the gift of Sabbath solely to stop our labor, but to promote our well-being and happiness.

Since we were created in God’s image, it seems to follow that we need to play, too – and sing, and dance, and hop, skip, and jump!

There are, to be sure, times for grieving. The past few columns have touched on matters of grief, anger, frustration, death, destruction, wars, and violence. They are certainly constants in our lives, but it seems that if that’s all we look at, that’s all we will ever see, and I’ll be darned if I am going to let the stupidity of dunderheads and transmissibility of viruses get the better of me. 

There is a wonderful church song called The Lord of the Dance. I am not one given easily to cry, but the dam always bursts open when I get to this point in the song: “They buried my body / And they thought I'd gone, /But I am the Dance, / And I still go on …” (© Bardis Music) 

Life is wonderful, despite the woes we see. Greater is the One we do not see! Music, joy, dance, and fellowship enrich our lives. I may find myself spending two years before the (antenna) mast; it may never ever retract, but it’ll never let that get me down here in this, our valley. Dance on!

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)