Living Water by Jacob Galura
Well, we have officially made it to the busy part of hurricane season in the Atlantic. Several new storms and a few more potential systems are floating between Florida and West Africa. With storms comes the hype of bigger, funner (I know not a real word) swell. The most difficult part of tracking hurricanes and their corresponding swells is the wait, we watch a storm system for days sometimes longer just so we can find out if we’ll be blessed with surf. However, seemingly every time we have a possible swell on the way, the hype starts building and understandably so after a summer season spent on small wave equipment or fishing.
With the hype comes expectations and if you’ve ever spent any amount of time chasing storm swell on the east coast you’ve probably had your expectations not met…..a lot. I know I have. and sometimes my walk with Jesus is the same way. When God puts an opportunity in front of me I frequently like to overthink and put my own expectations on God’s plans and inevitably am disappointed because it isn’t what I envisioned in my head. What I have learned is that despite God's plans almost always looking different than my ideas of His plans, they usually work out for the better, sometimes not in the short term but always in the long term. I’ve been disappointed because I hyped up an opportunity only to not see the fruit of Gods work until much later.
I’m trying to make myself approach my faith the same way I’ve learned to approach surfing in Florida. When I see a swell on the radar, I put my expectations on the floor so if I show up to the beach and it’s pumping, I’m beyond stoked, but if I show up and it’s howling onshore with a 15 knot current I won’t be crushed because I didn’t hype it up. I need this in my life because life with God is not promised to be perfect or even easy. It’s actually quite the opposite. We are told in the Bible that life will not always look the way we want it to and that we will experience hard days. But what is guaranteed makes it all worth it, we are guaranteed eternal life with Jesus when we accept this life and embrace it fully.
1Peter 1:6-9