OCEAN - Hope, Chaos, and the Sea In-between

the sea with the word ocean written on it.

I grew up by the seaside town of Torquay; trips to the beach are some of my fondest memories. As a tourist destination, people would come from all over the country, just to be beside the ocean.

In the book of Revelation, the last book of the bible, John is describing how he sees the world when it is remade into a place of peace.  In his description he adds that the ocean will be no more.

To our western minds this is a negative thing, not a positive one; but to a 1st century Jewish mind-set, the understanding of the ocean is altogether different.

We in the west have a romantic view of the ocean. We forget about the countless lives it has claimed, or what it is like to be aboard a boat and be tossed around in a storm.

This idea of chaos is the metaphor that John is using, that the ocean stands for the hatred, death and pain that covers the land like a flood.

Tom Wright describes Christians as ‘people of hope’. This is what defines us, we look forward to a time when this chaos is no more. We imagine what this absence of chaos looks like and seek to encapsulate it in our own lives, seek to make it a reality in our world.
May we know that the present pain will pass, may we live lives that bring peace, and may we know that a brighter day is coming.

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