Lavender Blue

A week earlier, Mr. and Mrs. Warren Lavender had decided to take up a new hobby. Only this was not just a hobby, it was a sport. They'd never done anything like it before; it would be fun, and who knows, maybe the exercise would do them good. Besides, they'd learn something about the mysteries of the ocean; expand their horizons. So, for the Lavenders, scuba diving was just the thing.

Because they wanted all their coming dives to be safe ones, both now and forever, they decided to take some time, get the necessary training, become certified. That would make it official. They got the training. They did well; they were now certified scuba divers. It was now time for their first-ever certified dive.

When they surfaced, Warren and Julie pulled off their masks, looked at each other and said, "That was awful." The dive had made Warren sick, very sick. He couldn't help it; he threw up. If that's what scuba diving was like, who needs it? No fun, none at all. For them, the day was a blue one, Lavender blue.

The water had been choppy on the surface and down below, the current was so strong, it had ripped Warren's mask off his face. They didn't even see any fish. They hadn't learned much about the mysteries of the deep. It had been one of those miserable experiences you want to forget.

Now it was time to get in the dive boat and get to the shore and to some over-the-counter stomach remedies. It was on the way back on their thirty-minute trip that Julie was the first to notice something strange. It was there, in the water. She saw a wallet floating by. She pointed it out to Warren. And then something else floated by-a chair, then a coconut tree.

When Warren looked at the captain, he noted a horrified expression on his face. The captain had just seen it – the beach toward which they were sailing wasn't there any more. All 130 meters of it were gone. The docks were gone too.

It was the day after Christmas when they'd gone to the bottom of the sea, the day of the tsunami. Now the wallet, the chair, the tree started to make sense – while they were on the bottom of the sea, they'd survived the tsunami. Now they knew what had torn Warren's mask from his face. Now they understood why it had taken all the strength they had to hold on to that coral reef at the bottom of the sea to keep from being swept away by the hurricane of a current that was sweeping like a 500 mph juggernaut under the sea. While down there, Warren thought, "I could really learn to hate this sport." Lavender blue.

After battling the returning waves, the Warrens landed and they went to their hotel, but it was gone too. They saw two policemen and hundreds of people running and screaming in terror.

The Lavenders are from Canada, but they live and teach in Kuwait City. When they look back and reflect on that amazing day, questions flood their minds. Over and over again, they ask, "Why?" Why that week, that one particular week out of a year of 52, did they decide to take up scuba diving? Why that day, the day after Christmas, one out of 365?

They ask, "Where? Had we not been scuba diving, where would we have been?" Warren and Julie say they'd have both been lying on that beach, the beach that wasn't there any more.

But then Warren asks a rhetorical question, "Who would've thought that instead of being on the beach, we were in the safest place of all. Underwater."

Most people have a vague feeling, a feeling that they may not be able to account for, but they've got the feeling that one day, some day, there's going to be a judgment day, a payday someday of God's tsunami. They've also got another feeling, this one not so vague. They've got this feeling that when that day does come and they stand before Him, the safest place to be is wrapped up safe and sound in their own righteousness built on their own good works.

They figure the safest place to be is all wrapped up in the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments with a weaving of some threads from the Sermon on the Mount woven in for good measure. They figure it'll make a nice, safe fabric. They figure wrong (Romans 10:3).

Just as Warren and Julie would have never figured or guessed that the safest place to be was underwater, so we can't figure out or guess our way into the safe place to be from God's tsunami. We couldn't know it unless God tells us, and He has. The only safe place is the cross, wrapped up in the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness you receive free upon believing in Christ, the righteousness that comes by faith alone in Christ alone (Romans 4).

In reality, it's not a matter of what's safe, safer, or safest, as if there were options. There are no degrees of safety; nor are there multiple correct optional answers. There is no good, better, best answer. There's the only answer – the righteousness of Christ credited to the account of the one who believes in Jesus.

Man's works, all the good and great ones, are the sandcastles built on that beach the day after Christmas, just before the tsunami.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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