If I Could See the Shore
- Jun 21
- 4 min read
On gloomy mornings, there is no first light, at least from the view of the earth on which you stand.
That does not mean the sun is not there.
***************
I had an older friend long ago who had survived her childhood in Hitler’s Germany.
After the war, she eagerly left Germany to live in Ohio to build a life and family; she was highly intelligent and eloquent and wrote this of her transition from Germany to the US.
”As I settled into my new home I was shown around the Toledo area. Of course, we went shopping, and, oh, the awe of seeing the wonderful things that were for sale in the stores...
“The sights were indescribable. Clothes, shoes, home furnishings, beautiful decorations, all there just ready and waiting to be bought and taken home by anyone who wanted to buy them.
“The stores and markets were filled with so many food items and different kinds of produce that I had never seen before, more than I could ever have imagined. All I could think about was the fact that in Germany everything was so empty but here, everything was so full.
“Yes, this was truly a fairyland, even more than I had hoped for!”
My friend had survived horror, a truly fascist state and the helplessness of never knowing when one of her family would be “disappeared.”
But her hope was in God, not the system around her, either here or there.
***************
Yahweh of whom we speak is omniscient, more powerful than the Greek gods or any phantasmagorical creature modern wizards can invent.
And yet His only Son-the Word made flesh, the Light, our Shepherd—chose to be hungry and weary, humiliated, tortured by humans so much less than he.
***************
Contemporary life presents a minefield of philosophical problems, both spiritual and practical, in the battle of light versus dark.
Depression, failure, unhappiness often center around dilemmas that resemble one another:
Does my life have meaning?
Do I have purpose?
Why am I at times so foolish?
Why do I do what I do not want to do and not do the things I should?
Who or what is my enemy?
In what do I invest myself and how much?
What is disinformation and what is truth?
Does anyone care about me?
***************
In 1936, Florence Chadwick failed to qualify for the Olympics, probably because she was a long distance swimmer and the Olympic races were short.
She was the first woman to swim 23 miles across the English Channel and back: in July 1952, she attempted to swim the 26 miles between the California coast and Catalina Island, accompanied by support boats.
The fog was so dense, the water so frigid and sharks circled her so near that, after almost 16 hours of swimming, Chadwick stopped, only to realize later she had quit with only a half mile to go.
“All I could see was the fog,” she said the next day, “.…I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”
Chadwick did swim the Catalina channel successfully later, three times.
This time, however, she had turned away too soon.
If I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.
***************
Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.
*************** In Mark 4, Jesus teaches the following parables:
~sowing the seeds of His Word~
~the lamp of God which illuminates the spirit~
~the parable of the seed that grows by itself the farmer does not know how- ~the parable of the mustard seed which is the smallest of all seeds but becomes the largest of all the garden herbs~
Jesus spent a long day teaching these stories to multitudes, but to be sure His closest followers understood, He spent time with His disciples explaining not only the purpose of creating such imagery, but also how to both interpret and apply them in their lives.
For some, the Word of the Lord is interrupted by Satan snatching it; with others His Word is like a seed that does not grow and to still others, His Word is choked, unable to flower because of the soil in which it is planted.
And then there’s the man who scatters the seed on the ground, who sleeps and wakes, while the seed grows, the man knows not how, and by itself the earth produces a crop which the man can eventually harvest.
***************
So why, after such an exhausting day, does Jesus say to His disciples, “Let us go over to the other side”?
Getting to the “other side” meant crossing the sea to venture into Gentile land where they, we learn later, will meet a “legion” of demons.
But perhaps the crossing itself is the experience Jesus wanted for His closest followers because this is when, as Jesus sleeps in the back of the boat, a fierce storm comes upon them and his disciples are filled with fear at the chaos around them.
This is when Jesus commands the chaos-so often described as a world without the order of God to….
*****BE STILL*****
He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables…If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear……For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.
*****************
