Posts
Every shoreline is a meeting place. Land gives way to sea.
Certainty gives way to mystery. One chapter ends while another quietly begins. The
Shoreline Series: Faith at the Edge is a weekly invitation to explore these
sacred thresholds in Scripture and in our own lives, discovering again and
again that God has always been a God who meets His people at the water's edge.
----
Session 1: The God Who Meets Us Between Worlds
Based on Exodus 14, Matthew 4, John 21
I. A Place That Belongs to Neither World
Stand at the edge of the ocean and notice what is beneath your
feet.
It is not quite land. It is not quite sea. The water comes and
goes, the sand shifts with each wave, and the line between one world and the
other is never fixed.
A beach is a threshold - a place that exists precisely because two
worlds are meeting there.
Neither world fully possesses it. The land cannot keep it. The sea
cannot claim it. It belongs to the meeting itself. And perhaps that is why so
many of God's most important moments happen at places like these.
Most of us know this feeling. Not from the ocean, but from life.
The space between a diagnosis and what comes next. Between a
relationship ending and whatever follows. Between the faith we had and the one
we are still trying to find. Between who we were and who God is making us.
Scripture does not call us to avoid these places. It calls us to
look for God there.
T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets,
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our
exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first
time."
The in-between is not a detour. It is often the journey itself.
II. Israel at the Water's Edge
Israel arrived at the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army behind them.
They were no longer slaves in Egypt. They were not yet free on the
other side. They were standing at an impossible threshold with no way forward
that made any sense.
"Moses answered the people, 'Do not be afraid. Stand firm and
you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.'" (Exodus
14:13)
The miracle did not come after they crossed. It came while they
were standing at the edge.
God did not ask them to figure out the crossing first. He asked
them to stand still and watch.
Henri Nouwen wrote,
"Waiting is not a passive resignation. It is an active
expectation that something is going to happen."
The threshold is not where God is absent. It is where He is about
to act.
III. Called from the Shoreline
The disciples were not in a temple when Jesus found them.
They were working, mending nets, sorting fish, doing ordinary
labor on an ordinary morning. Jesus came to the edge of the water and called to
them where they stood.
"'Come, follow me,' Jesus said, 'and I will send you out to
fish for people.' At once they left their nets and followed him." (Matthew
4:19-20)
He did not wait for them to arrive somewhere more prepared or more
spiritual.
He came to the shoreline, to the boundary between the life they
understood and the one they could not yet imagine.
Dallas Willard wrote,
"Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.
Effort is action. Earning is an attitude."
God calls us not once we have it figured out, but while we are
still standing between two worlds.
IV. Breakfast on the Beach
After the resurrection, the disciples went back to fishing.
Whether from grief or confusion or simply not knowing what else to
do, they returned to the water. They caught nothing. And in the early morning,
Jesus appeared on the shore.
"Jesus said to them, 'Come and have breakfast.' None of the
disciples dared ask him, 'Who are you?' They knew it was the Lord." (John
21:12)
He already had a fire going. He already had food prepared. He met
them in their uncertainty, not after it resolved.
This is also where Peter's restoration happened. Three times Jesus
asked him, "Do you love me?" - one question for each denial.
The healing came not in a moment of triumph but in a quiet conversation beside
a charcoal fire at the water's edge.
Brené Brown writes in Rising Strong,
"The middle is messy, but it's also where the magic happens -
where transformation begins."
Jesus did not wait for Peter to have it together. He met him at
the threshold, between failure and grace.
V. What God Does at the Water's Edge
A pattern emerges in scripture.
Once you begin noticing it, you see the shoreline everywhere in Scripture.
Again and again God chooses places of crossing rather than places
of arrival.
He seems strangely drawn to thresholds.
God parted the sea while Israel stood at its edge, not after. He called the disciples from the shoreline, not from the other side of it. He built a fire on the beach in the space between grief and understanding, not once the understanding had arrived.
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and
when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you." (Isaiah
43:2)
Not when you have passed through. While you are passing.
Thomas Merton wrote,
"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too
little."
We settle for waiting until things are resolved before we expect
God to show up. But He is already there, at the edge, in the in-between, in
the space where two worlds meet.
VI. Standing at Your Shoreline
The beach is a reminder we all need.
Most of life is lived at a threshold of some kind. We want God to
meet us at the destination, once the answers are clear and the future is
secure. But scripture tells a different story.
He is the God of the in-between. The God who meets His people at
crossings, thresholds, and water's edges. The God who builds a fire and cooks
breakfast in the middle of our unresolved grief.
"Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm
46:10)
The shore beneath your feet may feel like it is shifting. It may
feel like neither land nor sea.
That is exactly where He does His best work.
Practicing the Presence of God at the Shoreline This Week
- Name
your threshold. Where are you between two worlds right
now? Write it down without trying to resolve it.
- Stand
still before you strategize. Before you make your next move,
pause. Ask God what He is doing in this in-between place.
- Look
for the fire already burning. Where is God already at work in
your uncertainty? What provision has appeared that you have not yet
acknowledged?
- Extend
the shoreline to someone else. Who in your life is standing at
a threshold? Offer presence rather than solutions.
- Release
the destination. Pray not only for where you are going
but for what God is doing while you are on the way.
If today's reflection encouraged you, you may also enjoy:
• The Place In Between Where Life Still Meets You
• The Fifth Season: When Closure Never Comes But Clarity Does
• Before Resurrection Was Recognized
The Shoreline Series: Faith at the Edge is a weekly Saturday devotional exploring the places where God meets us between endings and beginnings, certainty and mystery, grief and hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment