Witness

 

I sit on the upper deck of a rented beach house watching the variety of life around me. It’s early morning (well, early for a vacation day), and brown pelicans glide in silent groups just overhead and out over the water. It’s fun to watch them suddenly drop out of formation into the water where I believe they are catching their breakfast. Yesterday we watched dolphins surfacing briefly out there as they also patrolled the ocean for food.

My granddaughter Marley continually collects sea shells that she lines up on the lower balcony railing and loves to show to anyone who gets near. These shells really are marvels bearing evidence of many kinds of ocean life.

Out on the beach, a woman runs by with a golden retriever, folks are setting up blue and yellow umbrellas, and already a few children are playing in the surf with their boogie boards. And here comes a man walking a black standard poodle.

This week, I am reviewing John 1:1-14, and as I whisper the opening words to myself, my eyes fill with tears of emotion. “In the beginning . . .”—before all this activity, before the dogs and the birds, and even the seashells, “was the Word.” Here at the ocean, it’s easier to imagine the formless void that existed before “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”(Genesis 1:2).

The John passage goes on to say of Jesus, “In Him was life”—all this life! All the abundance of life forms we see here and so many more all around the world. The summer months particularly put the variety of life on display for us. Maybe you are watching raspberry vines for ripeness and scanning tomato vines regularly for growth. Maybe you just enjoy the bounty of others’ gardens during the summer, but the evidence is all around us that our Creator is imaginative and wise.

The John passage goes on to say “the life was the light of men”—intended to show the way to God and to give us entry into His presence. For me, it’s easy to believe in God at the beach. The vast ocean is such a mystery, but the witness of the dolphins and pelicans shows us that there is life beneath the water.

And the birds, bugs, and plants in my back yard at home also point me to a God who is wise and wonderful. My hope is that I too can be a witness—maybe not as powerful, but possibly as faithful as the waves that continually crash on the sand here at the edge of the continent.