God at Low Tide

A Sea Star on Edmonds Beach during Low Tide

Much of my life, I was taught to look for God on the mountaintop.

The clouds part.

The prayer gets answered.

The breakthrough comes.

The choir swells.

Everything suddenly feels clear and alive again. And we smile and say, ‘God is good all the time!”

I still believe there are mountaintop moments.

I have known some.

I have watched sunsets from alpine trails,

held newborn grandchildren in my arms,

stood in sanctuaries where the singing nearly lifted the roof,

sat beside hospital beds where healing somehow came.

There are moments when the clouds break open and grace feels unmistakable.

But lately, I have been wondering if we have unintentionally trained people to recognize God only at high tide.

Only in clarity.

Only in victory.

Only when life looks whole. Because low tide faith feels very different.

On Monday the tide in Puget Sound pulled far back from the shoreline—

the kind of tide where suddenly the hidden world appears.

Rocks emerge.

Channels cut through the sand.

Mussels cling to exposed stones.

Tiny pools shimmer with life you normally never see.

At high tide, the Sound looks smooth from a distance.

At low tide, it tells the truth.

The beach becomes uneven.

Tangled.

Muddy in places.

Broken shells everywhere.

But if you slow down long enough to look closely, the shoreline is also teeming with life.

Maybe faith works that way too.

Maybe there are seasons when the tide goes out in our lives.

Retirement.

Grief.

Disappointment.

A diagnosis.

A church that no longer feels certain.

A marriage that grows quiet.

Children moving away.

Prayers unanswered.

The strange exhaustion of carrying too much for too long.

And when the water recedes, we suddenly see things we did not notice before.

Not always beautiful things at first.

Sometimes the exposed places are jagged. Sharp rocks.

Old wounds.

Rusting debris we thought had disappeared long ago.

But sometimes there are jewels there too. I went to the beach in Edmonds on Monday.

It was amazing.

I tried to cetch it all, and I wish I had seen this…a Sea Star.

Someone posted it on facebook hours later! How cool!

I once had a member of my church whose house burned down shortly after his wife died.

The fire completely destroyed the home.

He asked me to meet him there, and I remember him standing in the ashes, weeping, digging through what remained. I told him, ‘This has to be devastating.’

And he said something I have never forgotten.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s funny. Me and my two kids have been digging through this rubble, and we’ve found beautiful things.’

He said that in their grief they had almost turned their memories off.

But going through the burned house, they began finding forgotten treasures. Photographs.

Small objects.

Stories attached to ordinary things.

Pieces of her they thought had vanished.

And then he said quietly,

“Somehow, we’ve found God’s presence here too.’

I have thought about that moment many times since.

Not because the fire was good.

Not because loss is holy by itself.

Ashes are still ashes.

But because sometimes when everything covering our lives gets stripped away, something deeper is revealed underneath.

Maybe that is what low tide faith is.

Not denying loss.

Not pretending suffering is beautiful.

Not calling devastation ‘a blessing.’

But learning how to look for God differently.

Not only on mountaintops.

Not only when the clouds part.

Not only when certainty feels strong.

But down here too.

Among exposed roots.

Broken shells.

Ashes.

Mud.

And all the living things still clinging quietly to the rocks.

The older I get, the more drawn I become to the way Jesus moved through the world.

Yes, there were mountaintops.

But he never stayed there long.

He kept moving back downward:

into crowds,

into meals,

into grief,

into dust,

into exhaustion,

into ordinary human life.

Maybe that is why the risen Christ appears not first in triumph,

but on a shoreline at daybreak,

cooking breakfast for tired fishermen who had caught nothing all night.

Low tide God.

Not distant. Not hovering above the world.

Present within it.

Close enough to touch.

Your Friend and pastor, learning to linger a bit longer in the low tides of life, Brook