The Beach

The Beach
Wednesday, October 23, 2024 by Susan Lyttek

I have spent more days on a beach than I have on a mountaintop. For this life, that seems appropriate. After all, the new earth won’t have any sea, so I imagine beaches won’t exist either.

Unless the Jordan, as big as it will be, has a beach.

That seems possible.

My memories are gravitating to beaches right now because I will be on one for the next few days. I’m accompanying a group of ladies who are renting a house on the beach.

9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:9-10

8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
9 When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
10 When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
11 When I said,
‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!’ Job 38:8-11

When God separated the waters from the land, he created beaches. He created the border between land and water, the place where, according to God’s testimony in the book of Job “your proud waves must stop!”

The beach ecosystem is such an odd and fragile mix of the two worlds. The incoming tide nourishes many of the creatures who live along its shore. The outgoing tide removes a lot of the waste and debris to keep the beach more or less clean. And, in God’s wisdom and balance, it’s all controlled by the pull of the moon.

Amazing.

In this season of remembering, I remember many peaceful and awestruck days walking along the beach. One of my favorite things about being on the Atlantic beaches is watching the sunrise, and taking pictures of same. The clouds, the waves, and the light can make for some inspiring photos like the (somewhat blurry) one attached to this post.

Growing up in the Midwest meant I spent a lot of my summers at the beach, but not the kind of beach that people on either coast think of. Rather, I spent endless days on Lake Michigan’s beach or climbing its dunes. From most places on its shores, you can’t see the end of it and it feels as limitless as the ocean. But it’s fresh instead of saltwater. Even so, it’s still a borderland between the world of water and the world of land.

The Biblical account that talks about both these worlds the most is the book of Jonah. In that, we see the chaos that the sea symbolizes. Due to his disobedience and attempted escape, Jonah endures a storm of his own making (as sin often does for all of us). We see him preserved in the great fish, not because that was what Jonah wanted, but because God was not yet finished with the prophet. We see God ensuring Jonah survives chaos and the watery grave so that he can walk the path of obedience.

But we also see that God is more powerful than the most tumultuous sea. In the Job quote above, God limits the water of the seas and the lakes by the beaches. But, and this is an important but, when we feel fragile and besieged by wave after wave, God limits the chaos that comes into our lives. He creates in our days and times beaches between the seas (fresh or salt both can drown us) and the lands. He tells the disasters that approach us, “this far you may come into this life, but no farther!”

It's fitting that God’s quote about the limits on the seas, occurs in the book where a man endures more chaos than anyone else in Scripture. God had told Satan early on, “this far you may go into Job’s life and no farther.”

We all have seasons where life seems to spiral out of control. When you walk along a beach, remember. God will not only create beaches in your life to protect you, but he will show you some awe-inspiring sunrises of hope along the way.

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