From Inverbervie to Galilee and back again

O Sabbath rest by Galilee

O calm of hills above

Where Jesus knelt to share with thee

the silence of eternity

interpreted by love

Those last two lines, they get me every time. The juxtaposition of eternity and love, not only love as endless, but beginningless; Galilee, a sea which could just as easily become a dangerous cauldron of cross winds and skewing waves; Jesus kneeling before the Father when an eternity of relationship is distilled into the fatigue and emptiness that is the consequence of exposure to the neediness and demands and self-concerned energy of human flesh; that's the reality of the Word became flesh. But it is a reality in which glory kneels in the silent place, and the silent concord of eternal love interprets to Jesus the heart of the Father. Within the tragedy and costliness of human sin and broken love, in that particular place in the created universe, beside the sea of Galilee, once again, through the Word made flesh, God looked on a world, "And God said…"

I love walking by the sea. Partly because the rhythm of the waves eventually persuades the rhythm of my heart, to fall in step.  And of course then my own steps slow down and recover a way of walking that isn't the driven energy of that pelagianism that not only makes me want to save myself, but also the world for good measure! At which point I come as close to praying as perhaps I ever do. "The silence of eternity interpreted by love…"