12 November 2015

Body Surfing

Yesterday, while in town,I spent some time visiting a friend. I enjoy our visits as he comes up with some profound insights into life in Zambia and the current economic situations that we are facing. One of the profound things that he said yesterday was,’’In Africa we always seem to miss the crest of the wave”. What he was saying is that in Africa we always seem to be late to the feast that the rest of the world has eaten and we are left with the crumbs.

Now I  grew up in Port Elizabeth, which is a beautiful city on the sea. One of my fondest memories was heading down to the sea for a good swim and some body surfing. Oh how I loved the thrill of flying down the face of the wave, feeling the power of the wave hurtling me forward with incredible speed and power. There was nothing like the feeling of having caught the perfect wave.

But timing was everything. If you were too late in swimming you floated over the crest of the wave watching it leave you from behind and you felt a little let down. You nearly had it and felt a bit of its power but it was gone. Now my fault was that I always tried to catch it a bit early. I was always a little closer to the shore than I needed to be. Well the result was that you got nicely “dumped”. As you set off ahead of the wave it kind of curled over you and hit you from the top. The result was that you were eating sand and seaweed for a while. But when you timed it perfectly it was amazing!! The feeling of riding and harnessing all that power was out of this world.

It got me thinking about life. Timing in life is so important. I am a bit early for most things. I try and plan, not for the good results, but to anticipate the problems. I am way ahead of today as I want to fix the problems before they have even happened. So I end up living life in the future and tend to get “dumped” many times. Why not get the timing right and ride the perfect wave? Well it is all about timing.

The Lord challenges us to wait on Him. Well I guess that is good advice as He is the One who created the waves and orchestrates life and its events. Catching the perfect wave in life would be having an eye and ear on the Lord and waiting for him to say “go”. So hard when you just want to surf that wave! I have been dumped so many times in life as I learn to read the waves. But as I  spend time with the Lord I am slowly beginning to read the waves. Some days I get a great ride, others I am afraid I get horribly dumped. But the things is, we have to get up, get the sand out of all those nasty places and try again. The Lord is so gracious with us and keeps the waves coming. Lets learn to get the timing right!

“Wait for the Lord;

be strong and take heart

and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14