Dwarf Oceans And The Magnitude Of God

I hate the beach. And I am the minority. The unoppressed splinter group rebelling against sand and salt in inappropriate places. It seems most white people go to the beach like there's free money there.

But I do not hate the ocean. Standing on a pier battered and worn by years of frothing mad sea foam, gripping salty wood with bare toes, and having my horizon gaze stopped by the ocean distance...I can't help but feel small. I can't believe I'm keeping my balance on this tilting, spinning, circling sphere. I'll watch the sun bathe in the Pacific, dirtying her waters red and gold with his dust. And I remember that a million earths, a million of these spinning tops would fit inside Apollo's chariot. (How many me's would fit inside the earth, I wonder?)

And the vast ocean, the pond that hold blue whales like tadpoles and the million tons of man's wreckage like aquariam decorations, this ocean is so small compared to the sky's furnace star - the sun. And the sun is a small star.
Compare him to the gas giants and the burning nebulae and the sun is a pale, paste-eating runt in a room full of professional rugby players.
My head can't hold the universe. It's like a caterpillar trying to grasp calculus, or a dog color, or a sinner mercy.

When you stand on the pier, sea mist smattering your face (daring you to jump into the dark blue turf below) and you stare out at the horizon wider and further than your vision, you do not think about how magnificent you are. The sun-garnished sky tells you that deep space is brilliant. And (if you listen closely) it tells you that you are not brilliant.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which You have set in place,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?

I'm not going to beat the dead horse metaphor that God's love is as deep as the ocean. It is a disservice to compare His love to such a shallow phenomenon. There are black holes that could suck up the ocean and not notice - too busy consuming stars and planets. The point of all this bigness is so that we can see how big God is and so that we can see how ridiculous it is that God would care for us at all. How much love He must have! The universe is God's metaphor for His character. We are so tiny, yet He cares? Boggling.

I should probably go to the beach more often to be reminded of Him. And I'm a bit strapped for cash.