The Crashing Waves
Picture by: Sarah Sexton
Once, there was a little boy sitting on the sand. He looked towards the ocean and seemed lost in thought. It was in the afternoon. The sun was setting, and in the distance, you could see the moon begin to appear as the sky began to darken.
A little girl came and sat next to him. Without a warning of whom she was or why in the world she had decided to talk to him, she asked, “You know what I absolutely love about the moon?”
The boy looked at her with a blank expression.
“Without the moon, there would be no waves”.
The boy looked at her, confused.
“See”, she continued, “This is how I picture it… God is the shore, and the sand, and the coast”.
The boy looked away and repeated what he had heard over and over, “God is always compared to the ocean”.
“We often think of His love being like the ocean, but I want to propose the opposite”. She looked out at the ocean and furrowed her eyebrows in thought. “The ocean can only be wherever there is sand to allow it to sit above it. In a similar way, God is the one that decides how, when, where, or if we exist. No matter how far the water goes, there is always sand beneath it. There is always land to limit it. We don’t see it. We underestimate it, but it is there.
Following that analogy, we are like water. Sometimes we are cold. Sometimes we are hot. Other times, we are beautiful and transparent. Sometimes we are dirty and tumultuous. You take a grain of sand and no matter how small it is, it will always be sand. You take a cup of water from the ocean and it no longer is an ocean. It is now just a cup of saltwater. You take sand and you heat as much as you can and you get glass. In a similar way, no matter how much we fight God, we will always get transparency. It may not seem like it when you see a bunch of grains, but when you study it and know its capabilities, you can get beautiful things. Many people who have put God on trial, not that you should, have found the clarity and beauty of His love. On the other hand, you take water, and you heat it up, and it evaporates. Friendships evaporate with fights. Relationships with people can be lost in an instant over anger”.
The boy thought of how his mom would always carry a small vacuum when they went to the beach. “I get it”, the boy said. “When you see God, it is hard to forget Him just like it is hard to forget the sand that goes everywhere with you”.
The girl put her palm in the water and slowly let it dry in the afternoon heat before their eyes.
“Yeah”, she said, “and water evaporates”.
The boy thought for a moment and said, “Sometimes the sand is too hot for us to walk on. Is that the same as God being too perfect for us to understand? That’s why we skip through theology? To get to the ocean? To get to the comfort of the world?”
The girl smiled, “Yes, I suppose so, yes”.
By now, they were walking along the shore. The girl stood in the water and said calmly, “The thing about the water, about people, is that it can be lukewarm. We are all surrounded by Him because we were created by Him. Some of us, however, never touch the sand. Sometimes the sand is too deep or too far away. Sometimes our way to God, as it is to the shore or the bottom of the ocean, can be thin and narrow or dark and lonely. Other times, all we see is people. We get discouraged, but we shouldn’t. Remember we only walk straight when we are on land. If we place our trust too much on people, we will drown”.
The girl noticed the boy looking and the moon and said, “Then, there comes the moon. The moon brings the waves. The waves come crashing against the shores. The moon isn’t bringing the waves close to her, so they will admire her. No, the waves are created only, so they can get to the shore. Our Lady brings us close to her in a similar way. The closer we get to her, the closer it will be for us to get close to God. We will fall in God”.
The boy baffled by everything, still looking at the moon, whispered, “I never got your name”.
The girl smiled sweetly and said, “My name is Luna”.
He didn’t know it then, but she was the moon that made his soul fall into Christ, like a crashing wave.
Not far away, there was a small chapel. Inside the chapel was a Crucifix hanging on the wall. His face was turned to the side. When you followed His eyes, you could see that He was looking at a small statue of a woman. Her hands were touching in prayer. A small rosary hung from them. She was dressed in white. She stood over a half-moon, and she smiled as she saw the kids admiring the crashing waves.
