Low Tide Warning

Today was a low tide day for the Puget Sound Region. The morning traffic reports were full of notices of cancellations, expected delays and vehicle clearance restrictions. If you commute by boat, tides affect your life.

Tides are the rising and falling of the ocean surface caused by external gravitational forces from the Sun and the Moon. Our lives too are affected by the external forces. We feel full and powerful when we are being swept along in the center of God’s will for our lives. Nothing seems to faze us at those times.

Then there are the low tide times when it feels as if God is far from us, that our beaches are exposed and that all the barnacles that are hidden below the surface are exposed. Navigation becomes tricky and the challenge is to not run aground.

But just as with the water of the ocean, God has not gone; there are just external forces that pull at us. It is during the low times that we need to remember that God will never leave us or forsake us. It is during the low tides that it is easiest to clean the crud that has built up below the surface and as long as we stay on the course marked out for us by God we will avoid the hidden sandbars.