“Look! There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice. My lover spoke and said to me, 'Arise my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.” (Song of Songs 2: 9b,10)

....

My family and I recently spent several days at the beach. It was a blessing for me in many ways.

Every day I walked the beach at dawn. Every morning, the tide was out, and every morning there was a tidal pool left behind in the sand. I was struck by the sublime elegance and beauty in and around those pools. As the sun rose over the ocean and as the daylight broke across the beach, I was amazed by the graceful “harmony" that was revealed in the sands of those tidal shallows.

  

There is a beautiful and poetic Book in the Old Testament Scriptures called “The Song of Songs”. It is both parable and metaphor that helps to remind us that our Creator will often gently beckon to us as a Lover might do, calling to his Beloved simply by his quiet Presence. In effect, God romances the soul of man through the Beauty and awesome Wonder of his creation, an intricate "garment" in which He is somehow clothed.

As I walked the beach and paused by these tidal pools, I was grateful for this quiet reminder of God's intrinsic nature, his care and beauty, left behind in the sand by the ocean's receding tide. The rhythmical patterns there were, in some way, evidence of a delicate yet profoundly moving "symphony" that had been  orchestrated and performed during the night, like the score of a sublime and romantic nocturne written on the shore and now revealed by the light of dawn.

....

[We may know God ] “.... by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

“All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.” ---Belgic Confession, 1516

....

“Although God is invisible and incomprehensible, God wills to be known under the form of created and visible things, by donning the garment of creation.” --Alister McGrath

 


 

“May This Tidal Pool Remind Me...”

(...of your Beauty, Lord, and Grace)


On this beachhead we have landed,
On these shifting sands we roam...
Help us find the True Foundation...
By your Grace, Lord, lead us home!

May this tidal pool remind me
Of your Beauty and your Grace;
Did You draw me here to worship
And to seek your Holy Face?

Did You offer here reflection
Of the Blessed Hope to be?
Did You place this pool before me
To suggest Eternity?

Is this pool a short epistle
From the Morning Star of Dawn?
Does it point to coming Glory
That goes on and on and on....?

Might there be Transcendent Virtue?
Is there Truth and Righteousness?
Might there be a Holy Standard?
Is there Sin we should confess?

Could it be that Truth's a Person?
A creative Awe-full Mind?
A Perpetual Foundation
Who exists outside of Time?

And then if this Person loves us,
How might 'He” then tell us so?
Might He speak through Nature's Beauty
In a shoreline tidal flow?


Help us hear your Soft Proposal
In the sand your tides caress;
Give us Grace to say “I do, Lord!”...
Give us Grace, Lord, to confess.

Teach the heart, Lord, of the matter;
Help us hear your Song of Songs!
By this harmony and rhythm
Call the Bride for whom You long!

In these tidal deed reflections,
May You teach us to adore.....
Help us know the Light of Glory;
Draw us to your Distant Shore....


Lord, your invitation's issued...
From the Cross... a Wedding Vow!
See your spotless Bride approaching;
And at Calvary, we bow.

....

“All creation, even our sins, everything that happens, all doing and considering...the total experience of living individually and collectively, carries God's messages as it were encoded. But we need the key to decipher them, to be able to decode them. And of course the key that came to us is the Incarnation.” --Malcolm Muggeridge

....

“For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3: 16)

....

“Let us rejoice and be glad
    and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has
     come,
  and his bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 19: 7)