I spent my childhood summers on Panama City Beach, Florida, at a cottage my grandfather built for my grandmother, a surprise for their twenty-fifth anniversary. The beach was something very familiar, the Easter Basket colors of its water–lime green, purple, cobalt blue. Its sand white as sugar, its dunes barely able to be climbed by a young child, and challenging to the point of necessity for a pre-teen. But the most impressive characteristic of the beach were the waves.
A wave can startle. A wave can hit you in the face. And unless you’re careful, a wave can bring you down.
Isn’t life like that, too?
Don’t we often have wave after wave of surprises, disappointments, and even devastations in life? And yet, the same waves that bring these things can also bring delight, laughter, and joy.
There are scientific principals that effect the waves on a beach, make them less or more.
There are principled and unprincipled people who effect the waves in our life as well, making it more or less.
Who are those people in our lives?
On a beach, there are some wonderful waves we’d play in, and some violent waves we wouldn’t go near for fear of danger.
In life there are some wonderful people who care deeply for us, people who always tell us the truth. But there are some whose lies we fall for time after time. Shouldn’t we discriminate between the two? Shouldn’t we consider the dangers, or benefits of each?
Most of us say we seek the truth, but often, our actions show otherwise. Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18
We are only hypocrites unless we really try to discover and accept what Truth actually is. There are some people who can help us in finding real truth, people who will walk with us if we let them–people who mirror the image of God in which we are made. On the other hand, there are people who pretend to be our best friend, but who actually who mirror the Father of Lies. Though their mouth is smoother than butter, enmity is in their hearts; their words more soothing than oil, yet sharpened like swords. –Psalm 55:21
Which of these people should we reach for when the waves of life hit us in the face? Which of these should we walk with when we are drowning in the many lies of today’s culture? Which of these should we trust during our journey toward eternal life?
Translating a World on the Edge 