Mhairi Forrest

For the past several months, I’ve been asking God to take me out into the deep water. I spend alot of time sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean, at a place I call my cathedral. The water there is such a beautiful picture of the vastness of God’s love, mercy and grace, unrelenting, fathomless, fierce. I’ve thought alot about what it means to go in deeper. Love. Mercy. Grace. Such innocuous sounding words, soft words, easy to slide over, casually tossed around in conversation and rendered anemic, yet, costing everything.

In the shallows, I’m in control. My toes grip the earth and I know what to expect. I get a bit wet in the waves of God’s love, but only what I can manage and I measure out to others the same. But inside of me I hear, “Will you go deeper? Are you brave enough?”

As I wade farther in, the water is rougher, more demanding, not as pleasant. Will I love the unlovely? Forgive those who wound me? Serve those who despise me? Each time I answer yes, the water engulfs me and I no longer touch bottom. I struggle to keep my head above the waves, to preserve some mastery over my life. And again I hear, “Will you go deeper? Are you brave enough?”

I’m afraid of the deep. I can’t see what lies waiting underneath, what will be asked of me and I feel exposed, vulnerable. Out there is the fullness of God’s love. Love that emptied itself of awesome glory and power, poured itself into human flesh and then suffered on a cross to the point of death. Jesus was willing to go to the depths for me, can I do the same for him?

I’m not out there yet, out in the deepest, darkest waters; but I can see others ahead of me who’ve followed him there, the ones willing to lay down their lives to love as he loves, and it gives me courage to press on.