Waves of Love – Joshua Petrillo

sunset — Sunset on the beach at Lake Michigan this evening.

The beach was quiet today. The crowds of summer vacationers had left for the day and the solitude of the long shoreline drew me toward the crashing waves. The sun was still an hour or so away from setting as I settled down for some meditation under its warm rays. As I lay there listening to the sound of the water, I began to just meditate on my surroundings and thanking the Lord for His creation and the beauty around me. It’s not every day I get to just reflect and sit for a while, technology-free. The pace and place of reflection can be slower and more measured, and your thoughts are quiet and introspective. But I believe that these times are valuable and significant. It’s like when David is speaking to the Lord in the 139th Psalm and he says, “O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me….Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

The Lord and I began having a little running conversation. This was a moment:

J – God, it amazes me that you created this place of beauty and I can come for just an hour and experience peace and tranquility. Your creation is just so brilliant.
G – This lake, as big as it is, doesn’t even begin to demonstrate the size of my love for you. And see those waves, how they come in and out? It’s like my love washing in again and again. It smoothes out the rough edges and makes you clean. When I pull back for a moment, it is not that I am abandoning you, I am just getting ready to wash over you again with my love.

Then I was led to read the book of Colossians in the Message. In chapter 2, it says, “Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve…. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross.”

And that is my prayer… To be continually washed clean from those nagging sins by the eternal and abundant love of the Father. His desire is for me to be holy, pure, and spotless!

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