Skipping Stones

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea,  or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (Job 38: 16)

Just a week or so ago I was standing alone at our little beach and for whatever reason reached down and began skipping rocks. The water glistened as the rocks skimmed across its surface. What a beautiful day to enjoy a warm sunny, summer afternoon. I began having fond childhood memories and thought of times spent with my children when such occasions were fun, entertaining and even competitive.

How much like life such experiences can be. We are each like a rock skipping across the surface of life. We come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and colors and move at varying speeds – just touching the surface level of life. Theologian Paul Tillich spoke of the “horizontal dimension” of life as,

“never engaging in behavior of depth,
but rather seeking escape through
diversionary activity in the pursuit
or trivial goals and superficial values.”

How easy it is to skip across the routines of our daily living making contact with only surface realities of life. If we take the image one step further, we know that eventually the rocks drop to the bottom – so life’s tugs pull us to the depths. Some rocks skip more than others while some hardly skip at all and go right to the depths. Each moves to a different depth with some never making it out of the shallows. The difference between us and the rocks is that rocks cannot control their speed or direction nor can they pick themselves up and move to deeper depths – we can.

My hope is that during the summer we have all experienced some of the depths of life and that we continue to embrace life’s depths as we meet them, knowing that God is there with us.

And so we proclaim with the Apostle Paul:

“O the depth of the riches and wisdom
and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33)

Looking forward to discovering new depths in worship this fall.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. David D. Young
Senior Minister

This article appeared in the Wave on September 8, 2021