Chlorine Preference

I love the ocean, well sort of anyway. A couple years ago, I was was enjoying thanksgiving with my wife's family in Myrtle Beach. I remember spending countless hours at night just sitting at the beach and watching the ocean move and breath. It was beautiful. There was just something about the night calmness and vast ocean, staring back at each other, in an unusual, but sweet fleeting moment, that created a feeling of smallness and awe within me.

My unusual relationship with the ocean starts and stops on these fleeting moments. The ocean is beautiful and I certainly have grown to appreciate this. However, the way I see it, the ocean is also dangerous, scary, and ambiguous enough that I rarely ever actually step foot in the water. And the times that I have actually waded through the ocean waters, I never have really enjoyed it. There is to much of an unknown for me to reap the joy of ocean time. The fact that I do not know what is lurking around in the ocean waters, prevent me from moving with any concept of freedom. The majesty and beauty of the ocean can only bring me so far before I meet my other friends, fear and ignorance. This is my complex relationship with the ocean.

I like to swim, but not in the ocean. I am more then satisfied with nice little chlorine pools in the back of hotels. Swimming pools are not as beautiful as oceans, and they hardly inspire me. But, I can swim with no fear. Where the swimming pools lack in beauty, they make up for it in the fact that I am swimming in transparency. I have a chlorine preference. I may not be proud if this, but it's true.

The more I think about it, my chlorine preference is my God preference. I love God, I really do. I stand from a distance time after time and I am mesmerized by His movements. I can recall fleeting moments where I have been taken in awe of God. He has been an inspiration to me over and over again. He is beyond big, and I feel beyond small in His presence...from a distance that is.

But, perhaps too often, I have been all to satisfied with this relationship. I have waded in the waters of distant appreciation rather then to fully embrace the unknown and wonder of deep faith. I am really starting to understand that I have a more then healthy fear of God. Sure He is awesome. But I too feel the danger when I get too close. When my feet get to close to the shores, God's spirit shakes me, and this is unsettling to me. I always retreat back to the comforts of small groups and singing nights at church. There is comfort and a shallow happiness that abides in nice little chlorine pools. But, I am beginning to want more. For every "abundant life" that God promises in the scriptures, there is also a "sell all of your possessions" passage that scares me.

Teach me Lord to no longer be satisfied with comfortable chlorine pools, and lead me to deep faith in Your bigness and danger. Forgive me for creating you in my image. Allow my ignorance to coexist within your truth and wisdom.

Amen

- Dan Jones