Lessons From Topsail

My wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary this past week by taking a trip alone to Topsail Island, NC. We rented a condo built right on the beach and overlooked the ocean. Though I took a week sabbatical from all serious study, I learned quite a bit a bit on this trip. Here is just one reflection.

A Great Day. I’ll never forget last Thursday. The day began with me taking pictures of the sunrise over the ocean at 7am. As it turned out, I was far too sleepy for the task and all the horizons were slanting up. Then I had breakfast on our deck overlooking the ocean, took some more pictures of a shrimping boat I thought our kids would enjoy, and read a bit. Shortly after Jen and I were on the beach. We played like children in the waves. Jumping over them, into them, getting pummeled by a good many of them. We reclined in our beach chairs with a good book in hand as the rising tide licked at our feet. We took small walks through the cool water and sand collecting shells and shooting pictures of crabs. For dinner we drove to a local seafood market, bought some shrimp caught that morning, took it back to our room and grilled some shrimp kabobs.

Not Enough. It was a great day. One of the funnest days I’ve had in a long time. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Not that I’m complaining. I was flooded with perpetual gratitude that day that God would blend wind and water, sun and sky into such a glorious experience, that I have a wife who didn’t feel too adult to splash like a child in the foaming waves. And as I read in the midst of the ocean tide, sipping Sobe, and stealing glances at my beautiful wife, I constantly thought, “Can it get much better than this?” But at the same time, there was something sad about the experience. Sad because it had to stop. As it turns out, sun, wind, sand, waves, shells, and even my wife, though rapturously delightful, are also thoroughly exhausting. My frame came to the end of itself and could take no more.

“We shall be like him, because we shall see him as He is.” I gained a greater insight into this statement this past week. If the power and splendor of the ocean is too much for my frame to contain, then how much more its Creator. The tricky thing about joy is not that there is so little to be had. Even in this fallen world, wonders of delight abound all around us. The problem is that we cannot endure. They are too much for us. We think we grow bored, but in reality we are often just weary and spent. And if we were placed in the arena of unceasing pleasure, we would not be pleasured unceasingly. If there was no escape, pleasure would turn to torture. As the waves and wind break the rocks into specks of sand, so they would break us, pulverize us. What then would the infinite splendor of God do were we admitted into his presence?

“We shall be like him, because we shall see him as He is.” There are several layers to this statement, but one layer is certainly this. Only as we are transformed spiritually, morally, physically into a splendor ourselves could we enter into his splendor and find life rather than death. So I long for the day, when I stand in the seas and not grow weary, and when I can stand in the gaze of its Maker and pulsate with his unremitting pleasure.