RIP CURRENTS

Dear Saints in the Lord,

I wish I could hold onto the settled spirit I have some days-the days when I trust in God and feel his peace in my heart and laugh at the feeble attempts of my anxious thoughts to tear down my peaceful bower. I want to stay there, snuggled in His arms, warm and cozy and secure. But then I have a bad day-when I listen to the chaos and gossip tries to drag me into her clutching grasp and worry pulls me out to sea like a rip current.

If you are not from a coastal community, maybe you aren’t familiar with rip currents, or rip tides as they are often misnamed. Rip currents are a strong, narrow river of current that cut across wave lines, and easily carry a swimmer away from the shore. The current in a rip can get pretty fast, making it impossible to swim against it. The solution when caught in a rip current is to relax and let the current push you out to sea until it ends. Then one can signal for help, or swim diagonally away from it, and back to shore. 

What you cannot do is to try and swim against a rip current to get back to shore. This is why more than 70 people in the US in a year die in rip currents.  Once you are in the current, you have to give up control, and wait until the current ends.

The days when I forget this, and try to swim against the current of anxiety I have found myself in, are exhausting and unproductive. I struggle to remember that:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”  Isaiah 30.15

The Lord God tells us so many times that we should not fear. He also tells us:

Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46.10

Just like we cannot win against the fast-moving current of a rip, we cannot win against our own sinful nature. We cannot swim against the current in our own strength. We need to be still. We need to trust that God will carry us to a safe place and rescue us.  He may send a lifeguard to haul us out, or he may give us the strength to swim back to shore. But Jesus, the Son of Man, has come to seek and save the lost, (Luke 19.10). So on those bad days, stop trying to fight the rip current on your own and settle back into the arms of your Savior. He will never leave or forsake you. (Deut. 31.6). Thanks be to God.

Grace and peace,

Tracey+

Prayer:

Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on the One who cares for us. Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.