Today was our first Sabbath in Australia and while I didn’t feel like I needed physical rest, it was a valuable time to take a day to spend one on one intentional time with God. Before the majority of the team was awake I got to spend some time with my Bible at the cafe tables here at the church, it was great! While reading I got a notification on my phone and it happened to be the Bible app sending me the verse of the day, which was Psalm 113:3 “from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.” Initially I recognized the application of this verse in my life because often times I find myself outside, recognizing things in nature, just thinking “wow, God is so cool!” Or “gosh, God is so good!” Just truly recognizing and praising God for his creation as little happy gifts for us.
Many parts of Australia are currently on fire, as I’m sure everyone is aware, but today it absolutely poured rain… all day. We even had flash flood warnings! You wouldn’t think you could ever get excited about a flash flood warning, but it just means we’re getting so much rain here and I had one of those “God is so good!” moments. Despite the rain, we still walked to the store to get food for meals today, but I wanted to adventure more still. A few of us decided to toss on our swimmies and shorts and walk down to the beach because an ocean during a storm is always exciting. I have always enjoyed the ocean and even during a storm I’m able to find comfort and peace in the waves.
When we got to the beach I went straight in the water and my squad mates dispersed to the coffee shop and for a run down the beach. Ordinarily a stormy ocean would be intimidating with the vastness and the aggressive breaking of the waves, but today was different. I was standing out in the ocean, alone, watching waves break in front of me while still being able to recognize individual rain drops pattering the water. It put the experience into a unique perspective as that we are small individuals in this big, intimidating, vast world, but we are still able to make a recognizable ripple impacting the entire world. We are the fresh water rain droplets diluting the salty ocean, praising the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun to its setting.
