I heard someone say recently that when the tides of life are high it’s easy to navigate your ship. There’s plenty of water and the rocks don’t come much into play. It’s when the tides are low that you find yourself with obstacles all around. Of course, the reality is those rocks were always there under the surface.
As we listen each night to the rhetoric of fear around a financial crisis or an election or global warming, it can lower the water level a bit. But when something hits you directly, a lost job or dwindling retirement or cancer, it can feel like all the water has been sucked out. All of a sudden, life is full of rocks.
Low tide times can take a toll on a marriage. The outside pressures reveal and highlight problems with insensitive communication, a short temper, or selfishness. The pressures didn’t create the problems, they just lowered the water level to reveal them. So what do we do? What we should do with all sin: identify it as sin, confess, repent and make restitution if necessary. God can move those rocks.
And the other thing to do is recognize that possibly you’re filling your reservoir with the wrong water. Jesus promises in John 7:38: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” We need that internal river flowing, not one that comes from without.
So coach your own soul to say with David:
