Grammar Police Officer

Mountains and Tide

I spent Labor Day Weekend in Kailua Kona, which is on the leeward side of the Big Island. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa block most of the rainclouds blowing in from the east (several thousand miles of ocean), so Kona is much more arid than Hilo is. It is still a seaside town and humid, but it is nothing compared to Hilo. It is great for going to the beach because it rarely rains.

On Saturday afternoon I sat in the surf at Hapuna Beach, just being there. The tide was coming in, so I had to keep moving in or miss out on my thinking time. By the time I left, there was a deep divot in the sand, a big gully filled with seawater. The waves had washed away all that sand sitting under my body.

Then, driving to the hotel in Kona, "Offerings" (the worship CD by Third Day)was playing. I thought about the line "your faithfulness is like the mighty mountains; your justice like the ocean's tide." And I could see Mauna Loa rising gently to the east. (Where else can you do that? See a 13,000 foot mountain and the ocean just nearby?)

Did you know that Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world? That is, if you measure from the base of the mountain, which is 17,000 feet under the ocean; this would make it over 30,000 feet tall. But above sea level, it is just a short mountain: 13,797 feet. Now, having grown up and lived the last year of my life at the edge of the Rocky Mountains gives me a sense of tall mountains that are in ranges the stretch for miles and miles. But a mountain is a mountain, be it an extinct volcano with several observatories, or only one mountain in a range that stretches from Alaska to South America...a mountain is a mountain, no matter where it is or what kind of mountain it is like.

Here are a few ways mountains are like God's faithfulness. They are there whether we can see them or not. Clouds do not make them disappear. The mountains are so big you cannot see all of it. You can go all the way around it and over it and even tunnel under it but not see all of it at once. You can live a whole lifetime in it's shadow and still not see all of it's personality. Pikes Peak is different every day. Some days the sun shines bright on it, highlighting the snow in the valleys. Sometimes the sun is dim and the whole thing looks flat and far away. You can never move it. You can bring in bulldozers and dynomite and do whatever...you can even move the whole heap somewhere else, but it will still be a darn big pile of rock! It will still be there!

I know more about mountains than about the tide, but having spent the last three weekends at the beach, I know a bit more about beaches than I used to. Here are some ways God's justice really is like the tide. It is constant. The ocean waves lapping over me were rhythmic and consistent, each one in the context of the one before and the one after, but each one was different. It may push me a little to the left, unlike the few previous, which pushed to the right. Waves are usually subtle, and only in extremity are they sowerful enough to wach a whole city away (like a Tidal Wave). Usually they are soothing and peaceful, but not weak. The power of the water washed a whole lot of sand away just while I was there. I think God's justice is like that: it is there, unchanging, and it changes the lanscape around us. So to the pure God shows himself pure, but to the shrewd God shows himself shrewd. When God's wrath pours out, you can run, though, run inland, and hopefully escape the worst of the damage. Or if you were compelled to stay at the waterfront, then you could hide yourself in the Rock that was cleft for you (that Rock is Christ). Remember the children's song "Don't build your house on the sandy land, don't build it too near the shore. Well it might be kinda nice, but you have to build it twice, you have to build your house once more. You'd better build your house upon the rock!"