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| Photo by Jean |
What if I told you that a seagull can kill a shark?
Not possible, right?
I didn't think so.
(Big sigh.)I love the beach. Everything about it. The sun, the sea, the sand, the rocks, the creatures, the smells and the sounds. Now that I have three kids going to the beach is a lot different than it used to be for me, but I have this one routine I always try to keep. When everyone else is still sleeping, I slip out and make my way to the shore every morning to catch the sunrise. I've loved doing this for as long as I can remember. I head over to Brown's on the boardwalk and get a couple donuts hot out of the fryer (honey-dipped are the best). Then I make my way to the beach. Sometimes I sit and wait. Sometimes I roll up my jeans and walk along the edge of the water.
This one morning I was walking and really wrestling with God in my spirit. It had been a really weird night. I was experiencing things in my relationship with God that I didn't understand. I had never known God in this way and I wasn't sure I wanted to. The more I prayed for clarity the weirder things got. So I took my confusion to the waves and felt the numbing cold on my feet distract me from the chaos inside.
It was then I saw the seagull hovering low over the water about three feet out from me. At first I was enchanted, "Oh--I'm gonna get to see him catch a fish right in front of me." I'd never seen anything like that. The seagull started this ferocious attack on the fish just under the surface of the water. It was a pretty big fish, as big as the seagull in fact. And then, I realized it wasn't exactly a fish. It was a shark. A baby shark, but a shark no less. I stood there paralyzed. It was the most amazing thing. The seagull couldn't pick up the shark, because it was too heavy, but its beak was strong enough to keep it confined and wound it severely. It had enough strength to move the shark in the tide's current to the shore about 4 feet to my left. The shark shuddered a couple times while the seagull pecked it to death and then finally gave up its ghost. Now there were a couple of things going through my head. First, I have to admit in the dark recesses of my mind was the small concern..."Where's mommy?" So I stepped a little further out of the water...ok, all the way out of the water. Then I kept thinking, "Am I really seeing this? This is a bit unusual, isn't it?" Curiosity got the best of me and I started to move ever so slowly toward the seagull standing guard over his shark. Ha! That seagull was staring straight at me, and every time I moved any closer toward the shark he tugged him that much further away from me. We played this game for a few minutes and then this awareness came over me. I had one of those moments where you become more aware of the spiritual realm than the physical reality. I had this sense of God's presence around me and I realized that He was speaking to me and that He was very present with me.
I had been asking Him all night...is this You? I need to know this is You. You as in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob You. You as in Father, Son, Spirit You. You as in when I pray, you're the One answering...right?
In that moment the sun peeked its peach rays up over the horizon and the sea turned to diamonds. It was breathtaking. No matter how many times I see it, it still has that effect on me. And I knew God was with me. Knew as in having a deep awareness of. I don't know how I knew, but I didn't have to keep blinking to check if I was dreaming.
And as I soaked in the horizon, I started to listen to some music and a song began to play that I didn't remember hearing before, at least it felt like the first time...and it was singing to me. It's by Hillsong, and these are the words:
Rest in You
Your faithfullness endures always
Where mountains fall and reason fails
And You calm the raging seas
And You calm the storms in me, again
All I know is I find rest in You
All I know is I find rest in You
My heart will praise throughout the night
Where singing seems a sacrifice
Your grace is all I need
Your grace is all I need
I still don't know what all God was saying to me then. At least not in words. Since that day I've always associated seagulls with angels, and I'm always moved when I see them in unlikely places...but that could just be the romantic in me.
Yet, I was thinking about this experience the other day and I take this lesson from it. There is so much that I am tempted to take for granted as truth. Things I say that I know it to be true. That something can or can't be because I have these parameters in my head of what defines it. If you had asked me before my experience if sharks could be killed by a seagull--I would have said of course not--that's just stupid. I believed that because in my head I was picturing Scuttle meets Jaws. Maybe something like that could happen in the movies--Disney movies--but not real life. I wasn't picturing the plucky son of a seagull who fished a baby shark out of 18 inches of wave at the edge of the tide before sunrise.
That is the lesson God teaches me again and again--that He is Ruler over all things--seagulls and sunrises, sharks and diamonds. When something doesn't fit my idea of what's possible it could be my parameters that need to be redefined.
I'm learning to trust in the Creator of nature more than my understanding of nature. I'm learning that He protects me from sharks--even when I am unaware, that He answers my wondering with more wonder, and that He is continually breaking down my sense of what is and replacing it with a sense of Who is.
Now if He could just work on keeping the seagulls away from my donuts...
"Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
Trust in Him and He will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
The justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him."
Psalm 37:3-7a
Originally Posted on Deep Calls,
January 29, 2008
