The Ocean Has No Memory

Like many people, I love the ocean. There is something so calming and peaceful about it.  Sure, the ocean can get quite chaotic and dangerous in times of stormy and windy conditions.  But my experience with the ocean is always around sitting on the beach and looking out into the ocean.  Listening to the waves crash and the tides coming in and out.  Sunrise, sunset, or even mid-day, the effect is the same.  Peaceful. Calm.  Relaxed. 

Sometimes I imagine the ocean tide coming in and taking away all my cares and troubles.  The wave crashes and comes into shore, grabbing those memories and carrying them back out into the ocean. Gone. I’m left with peaceful bliss.

Sometimes when I’ve been on a boat far out in the ocean, I look out and see nothing but water in all directions.  The water on the surface moving this way and that with no real direction, though the tide underneath carries the water forward.  Or backwards for that matter.  And I think the same thoughts where I’m pouring all my cares and worries into that churning ocean which pulls them down and away from me, into its undercurrent.  Gone. And I’m left again with that peaceful bliss.

No matter where I am in the world: the California coast, a beach in Thailand, or along the Mediterranean Sea, the ocean is the same wherever I go.  It moves in the same direction – tides coming in and going out.  Ocean currents moving to their own rhythms. When I think of the ocean, I imagine it has no memory.  It’s simply a conduit to help others. A place to deposit the past and move on to the future.  And when I again leave the ocean and come back on land, well that tells me where I am and I have an idea of where I am going.  I have a fresh start.

I’m grateful for the ocean.  It’s there when I need it and it’s always willing to help me.  A constant and consistent companion when life gets too extreme and I need help to move on from the past as I walk towards the future.   

·       Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:18-19)

·       Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings to us, and let us run the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

·       Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

·       Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again—my Savior and my God! (Psalm 42:5-6)

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