I want to talk about training camp, traveling, the amazing Kiwi people, everything… but what I keep coming back to is the beach. Primarily how beautiful it is, and how much I see God on the shore.
So that’s what I’ll talk about.
Waikanae Beach is about a fifteen-minute walk from camp. You have to go through a section of woods, walk alongside a river, and through pathways of grassy fields. After the short trek of vivid color and layered mountains and clear streams, you see it—the shore.
Walking on the beach elevates everything: all senses, emotion, breathing, all of it. It’s like God is walking beside me, pointing out his creation, and saying look at this pockmark in the wood, feel this sand in your fingers.
I spent fifteen minutes sitting in sand, watching it blow in the wind. The driftwood is captivating; the amount of scars and holes and stories splayed out across the surface of logs is amazing. I can picture God taking the seaweed and driftwood, tangling the branches and looping the vines around his fingers, intertwining it so tightly that it can never be separated. The sea has such power. The waves rise and fall with ease, pounding a steady march on the ready shore. All I could do was stand in front of the sea, hands out, worshiping God along with the waves. A sweeping mountain commands the background, clear and visible across the water’s surface.
New Zealand doesn’t have an arrogant beauty. There is nothing manmade or aggressive about it; it simply presents its beauty in a quiet and gentle way. It just is in the same that God is the great I Am. It reminds me of a verse:
1 Kings 19:11
“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”
God’s presence isn’t always known in some dramatic announcement or flashy show. God is in the simple, and He makes things beautiful and overwhelming in a quiet way. He is the gentle whisper from the waves or the footsteps left in a smooth track of sand.
God loves that we love his creation of nature. I can just picture him with a shy smile and a sideways glance, saying “Do you like this? I made it.”
And yes, God, I do. I really do.
