The Waves of Creation

Once I get to the southern most beach, the sand turns soft because the tide no longer comes that high. It used to flood this entire area to the sand dunes but, sand dunes move and they are now way out in the Back River. Running on wet dried compacted sand is pretty easy. Running through the soft stuff is one hell of a work out!

It's been this way for months now ... until today. The tide found its way back to the dunes and the run was easier. The ocean is calm, the sky is deep blue, a breeze blows from the north lessening the heat dripping from the sun. It is a Chamber of Commerce picture post card day.

I find myself staring at how the beach has changed. I find it amazing that the beach changes a little bit every single day yet somehow remains more or less the same too. The sun and the sea are forever sculpting and molding the beach as though it is an almost finished painting that is not quite done. Today the artist has wiped out an entire corner of the canvas and thrown up something entirely different from what it was yesterday.

"We know," St. Paul says, "that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of child birth right up until this present time ... Not only so, but we ourselves ..."

I've always loved this. Creation isn't done yet ... it groans as though a baby is being born ... it hurts like hell sometimes and no matter how you breath ... you end up screaming. And it's not just that way at the beginning of our lives ... it's right up to this present time.

We are still being created.

We are still creating ourselves.

In Hebrew (I know the New Testament is in Greek but they thought in Hebrew and wrote in Aramaic) it reads "Creation groans for its completion ..."

I think that's closer to the truth. We all want to be completed.

But we're not.

Life is messy. We rock and roll along then the tides change and chunks of what we believed, what we did or who we were are washed away. And we are left ... changed ... changing ... always in the present tense.

We groan for completion but we're never complete.

I read once that the first step a baby takes is away from the parent who loves her so. She may turn around and come back but ... it's only to leave again. As time passes, the steps become more confident, the walks longer, the destinations greater. Then the child is gone and the mother is left alone.

Quite the analogy huh?

If we're not forever participating in the ongoing creation of ourselves ... well ... we get left behind. Alone. Forget about the rapture and those silly people forever setting dates for Jesus to come riding down on a cloud pissed off because he was crucified and now ready to take revenge ...

Being left behind is when you stop participating with God in your creation. God doesn't do it if we're not participating. Today we need to be more than we were yesterday.

I know lots of people who are stuck in yesterday. They want to keep things the way that they were ... or are ... but that is not life. Life is forever being molded and sculpted. We're either participating or we're not.

So this morning I stopped my run, took my shoes, headband and I-pod and left them in the sand. Then I rode the waves helping to mold the sand into whatever it's going to become today. Just like I'm working with God as "WE" mold my life.

It was cool and refreshing.

Like creation always is.