I snapped the photo that sits behind my blog title while on our vacation to Myrtle Beach last year. I love this photo because it elicits such a diverse reaction in my soul. The ocean is breathtakingly beautiful, serene, consistent, and at the same time unbelievably terrifying to me. The immense vastness and powerfulness, to be blunt, just freaks me out!

I see the hand of God in every single aspect of the ocean, from its depth to its diversity of creatures and plant life. It reveals the fingerprints of God, and like God it is always there, the tides come in and go out each day just like they have since Creation. While I stand in awe of the ocean and of the God who created it, I also shrink in fear when near it. It scares me! Oh, I'll wade out into it during the day to play with the kids, but I am still very fearful. Won't have anything to do with it at night, and I would have thought twice about allowing the kids in it had we actually finished our science study of swimming creatures before we arrived. Goodness there's a lot of frightening creatures in that water.

Still, I love the ocean and all that it represents to me. This is the scripture verse that comes to mind when I am walking along the shore or when I gaze deep into the photo above:

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone -- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind closed doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, "This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt"? Job 38:4-11

Blessings!