“In His hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it.”
Psalm 95:45
Imagine you are standing at the seashore on a lovely summer evening, looking across the water at a beautiful sunset as the gentle incoming waves quietly wash up on the sand. What a beautiful sight this can be, with all around you so peaceful.
Perhaps two or three days later you come to the same spot. Now the wind is blowing fiercely, huge waves are thundering against the beach, and the sky is black with threatening clouds. How changeable the ocean can be, you might think, and you are reminded that our own lives are often changeable also.
But no matter how rough the ocean’s surface appears, if you could look down into deep water, you would find it calm and undisturbed by the turmoil overhead. Perhaps such a contrast should cause us to realize that when troubles come into our lives, we also should find it possible to be calm, by casting all our cares upon the Saviour who tells us to do this. We can be encouraged by these wonderful reminders from God’s Word: “O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto Thee? or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, Thou stillest them” (Psalm 89:89).
More than three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered by the oceans, the largest of which is the Pacific, some 11,000 miles wide between Panama and the China Sea. Before explorations were made, it was generally thought that the floor of the oceans was almost level, but researchers have since discovered amazing facts about what is below the surface. It is now known that the floor of the Pacific is mostly rough and irregular, having mountains and deep valleys in many places never seen from above.
If Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain with its peak five-and-a-half miles above sea level, were placed in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, it would rise five-and-a-half miles above the bottom but would still be completely covered by another mile of salt water. The ocean at that point is more than six miles deep!
In other parts of the same ocean where the water is not so deep, many of the underwater mountains break through the surface, causing the upper parts of them to appear as islands. The highest of these is the island of Hawaii, surrounded by other beautiful, lower ones, including Oahu, Maui, Kauai and others, extending all the way to Midway Island.
These things all speak majestically of God’s wonderful creation, and we will look at them further in the next few articles.
(to be continued)
ML-09/24/2006