Defenses 9/1/09

As I walked along the beach [yes again - my writing is usually inspired there!], I had been praying generally. I was asking for answers along with a peace that would get me through the current myre of chaos that is my life right now. I noticed something odd along the shoreline.

At first glance, it appeared to be some mutation of fish/squid...it was obvious its breathing was labored due to lack of water. Immediately, I wanted to throw it back into the ocean but was fearful - not sure why - it was just weird, odd, sci-fi even! A man came up out of curiosity and was just as boggled. We looked for a large shell to scoop the creature up with. At closer inspection, we realized this was a baby octopus - how cool! Anyhow, as the man bent down and brought the shell near to scoop it up, all the sudden, it turned purple/red and its die [ink, whatever you call it] immediately surfaced. It was a beautiful unfolding of nature in its raw form. Well, we walked out into the surf to ensure it did not get washed back up and watched as it made its way in the sand, at the bottom of the water, as waves rolled over, not in any way impeding its progress back into the ocean. As the man and I parted ways, he said that this was my good deed for the day and he was sure I was going to have the best day ever. Little did he know, he made my day just by saying that. LOL. As I walked away with a grin, God began to speak.

Often in life, we are perplexed with why things happen the way they do, why we cannot overcome in certain areas, why God waits so long to answer prayers or to bring provision. We look at in a defensive manner rather than an offensive manner. You see, as soon as we came close to the octopus, it automatically used the only defense it had to a perceived threat. Little did the octopus realize that the perceived threat was actually a life-saving gift. You see, in our lives, we sometimes defend ourselves automatically when what we perceive as a threat - what hurts us the most - is actually something that is working towards the greater good in our life.

I am certain, in this epiphany, there is something for me to learn, to see, to recieve. The automatic knee-jerk reaction in life is to protect ourselves; whether that be from people, from emotion - whether positive or negative, from situations, even from God at times. What happens when we trust that everything truly does work for good in the lives of those who know Christ? What happens if when bad things happen to good people, we recognize that there is a lesson to learn, a reason for it?

We are an imperfect people in many ways. Probably, the largest imperfection is the inability, at times, to see outside of ourselves - to see beyond the current and look forward to the "is to come." The octopus went in defense mode but did that stop our action of saving it? No. It had no idea what was going to happen next. Most likely, it just held on. I mean who knows what octopus babies think...lol. Its instinct was that of "fight or flight." The problem was it had no options - no way to go anywhere WITHOUT help. Sometimes in life, we are presented with circumstances that prevent us from doing anything but do the best we can and hang on tight for the ride to see where it ends up. Just as the octopus, we have to hang on, go deep where the waves cannot toss us around and back to the shore where we started, and just keep moving forward. :-)