27 March - Holding your breath

Readings:
Psalm 93
Rom 5

In the last week I read up on the Crimea a bit to try and get some perspective on what's going on out there. In the process I came across an image of a hauntingly beautiful painting of a stormy Black Sea. It was painted by a Russian master called Aivazovsky. He was born in a port city on the Black Sea and became renowned for his seascapes. I love the picture, and set it as my desk top background on my laptop. I enthusiastically showed it to my father in law who spent upward of a decade at sea, assuming he'd also love it. He shook his head as he looked at it. "It may look nice from the land" he said, "but when you're at sea that is horrible". 

Mighty floods represent a deep and ancient common fear. The world looked in disbelief and horror at YouTube clips of the awful tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. Waves of up to 30m high struck Indian Ocean coastlines, leaving a trail of devastation and over a quarter of a million people dead. The Bible generously uses imagery of mighty floods, from Noah and the ark all the way to Jesus' story of the two guys building their houses respectively on sand and rock. A flood is an apt image for an impending threat so overwhelmingly big and destructive that it cannot be resisted. The prophets spoke for instance of the massive foreign invading armies coming at Israel in terms of floods. (See Isa 8:6-8 for example).

Real waters aside, we can all feel from time to time that something is threatening to overwhelm us just like a flood would. It could be a situation at work or in our families. Maybe a friendship is being drowned in an issue too big to resolve. For one person it can be sickness, for another addiction, failure, bankruptcy, or depression. It is a terrifying thing to be confronted by something over which you've got no control, and which has the capacity to bring destruction en masse to our lives. Psalm 93 brings a word of hope for those in times like this:

The floods have risen up, O Lord.

The floods have roared like thunder;

the floods have lifted their pounding waves.

But mightier than the violent raging of the seas,

mightier than the breakers on the shore - 

the Lord above is mightier than these!

When the flood waters strike, there is only one thing to so. You take everyone you can with you and you head for high ground as fast as you can. When everything around you are moving, you need to move to something that will not. 

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; 

my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

my shield and the horn of my salvation, 

my stronghold.

Ps 18:2

From the ends of the earth I call to you, 

I call as my heart grows faint;

lead me to the rock that is higher than I

Ps 61:2