Just a Day at the Beach

The past few weeks have been a bit rough, so today I decided to get a good book (The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis — highly recommend it), and go to the beach to read it while hearing the crashing waves.

While I was there, something happened. It was meaningful to me, so a dear friend encouraged me to share it. I don’t particularly have a way with words (or grammar), but here it goes.

I was just sitting there reading when an Asian American family showed up. There was nothing particular about them at that point in time, but for some reason they caught my attention. The little kid ran to the edge of the water, the mom bust out her camera, and the dad ran straight into the ocean. Upon nearing the water, the little boy froze up. There was this interesting facial expression to him. He looked simultaneously excited and scared. It looked as though the very same beauty, power and majesty of the ocean which so clearly was drawing him in caused a form of terror where he couldn’t move. He was stuck. He couldn’t go all in, but dare not walk out on such splendor.

The father noticed this, and immediately came back for his son. However, he did something which was peculiar to me. You see, in my mind he was just going to go back, pick up the boy and go in the water together. But he stopped a few feet away from the boy, still in the water, and past the point where the small waves were breaking. He, then, called out to his son: “Come to daddy.” The kid looked at his mom with an anxious smile. She assured him that he should go. At this point the boy did the little kid thing of walking in place, looking at his dad, then the water then the sand over and over again trying to grow enough courage to go in. Yet as he was “walking” he wasn’t moving out of that spot. The dad kept patiently and sweetly calling out saying things like “Do you trust daddy? Come on in.”

At this point my mind wandered, as it tends to do. You see, anyone who knows me well knows the high regard I have for family. So, to me this was an intriguing but beautiful father/son moment. Yet, my mind quickly changed focus, as it also tends to do. I couldn’t help but to see the parallel between this interaction and that between our “Heavenly daddy” and us, His children. My mind went to Matthew 7, where earthly fathers are compared to our Heavenly one. My mind went to the times where I, too, have been frozen by fear of the very thing that inspired me to move — the very thing to which I knew God was calling me. I thought of God, looking back at me from beyond the crashing waves which, at times, look so very tall to me, yet, from His perspective, are minuscule. I thought of these things, and heard Him saying “Come to daddy. Do you trust daddy?”

The best part in all of this is that not a moment had passed from these things coming to mind, when with a squeal of excitement and fear the little boy made a run for it as fast as he could through the water and jumped right into his father’s arms. This was immediately followed by loud laughter and screams of joy.

I guess it is good to trust Daddy.