How well do you know the ocean? Growing up I always loved the ocean but living on the wheat farms of inner WA I rarely had the opportunity to explore its depths. It seemed that every summer's day when we finally decided it was hot enough to merit the trek, by the time we actually arrived it was cold and windy.
Good practise really, because when I was ten we moved to Tasmania where summer is a myth and cold and windy the constant reality. But at least the ocean is close, quite literally all around us.
From my current residence it takes five minutes to get a beautiful, calm and sheltered beach with white sand to run across and rocks to scamper over. 15 minutes away is the closest surfing beach. So the ocean plays a big part in my life now—many summers are spent surfing its waves, skimming over them on a wakeboard and diving deep into them with a snorkel.
But how well do I know the ocean? Not very well.
For instance, the ocean covers over 70 percent of our planet with a surface area of 360 million square kilometres. I've only ever run my hands through the tiniest sliver of it, only set eyes on the smallest fraction. Even on my honeymoon cruise when our ship was surrounded by a horizon of blue I was barely making a dent on viewing the ocean.
If I could lay the surface out in a straight line of square kilometres, take the world's fastest jet, the X-15, and travel at its top speed of 7,274km/h for as long as I wanted, it would take me nearly 40 years of non-stop flight to lay eyes on the entire surface of the ocean.
And that's just the icing on the cake! When will I find the time to look under the surface and really get into what the ocean is all about?
I think it is safe to conclude that I don't know the ocean very well. Quite simply, the ocean is big—real big. It is full of surprises, discoveries and mysteries. I could dedicate my life to the pursuit of understanding it, but my knowledge is only ever going to cover a tiny fraction of the vast mass of water that is the ocean.
God's love is like the ocean
God's love is a vast, endless ocean which endures forever. I can dive into his love, run my hands through it and drink it in and yet never fully plumb its depths or tastes its end. The Apostle Paul says in his prayer for the Ephesians:
Ephesians chapter 3, verses 18-19:
"And may you have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
God's great ocean of love drove him to give an ungrateful world his only Son. This love sent Jesus to the cross, to die in the place of unrighteous men. This love propelled God to make a way of redemption open to all—to those who didn't love him back and even more so those who openly hated him. Through the love of God all are offered the opportunity to be adopted as God's own children.
How can I ever know something that surpasses knowledge? I will spend my life looking into it, studying it, exploring it, and still be quite sure I've only ever just begun the journey.
Thomas Devenish lives in Hobart, Tasmania. He works as a motion graphics designer and enjoys the diverse experiences life has to offer, from wake-boarding to curling up with a good book on a rainy day.
Thomas Devenish's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/thomas-devenish.html