i recently purchased a snorkel for my lap swimming that i enjoy so much.  i am no Michael Phelps when it comes to swimming, my technique isn’t even probably a sight to behold…or it might be just not in a complimentary way.  i have always had a hard time breathing so swim with my head lifted out of the water which after swimming for 30 minutes or more really begins to give you a crick in the neck. i have seen others use them, have always wanted one and finally so (because of a gift card i received for my birthday) i purchased one.

i do not regret my purchase but man oh man, it has definitely taken some getting use to…some adjustments were needed.  i have noticed however, now with some time under my trunks, that i am focusing more on my technique.  i am more aware of where i am, how i am kicking, my arm strokes, each breath even.  At first it was completely foreign all i could think about was breathing underwater!  i was underwater, for all intents and purposes anyway, and breathing isn’t something you do underwater…unless you are a fish.

Often times we as Christians can flail about trying to figure out how to “live” as a “Christian”.  We know some practical things and well, it doesn’t make sense that we are free in Christ.  When we feel bound by the world that we are so familiar.  So, we try beating against the wind in vain attempts at figuring out “how” to be “good enough”.

Let me start here: Ephesians 2:4-5  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)“…  It’s Jesus who makes us ALIVE, not anything we do!  When i figured out that that snorkel was making it so that i could breath, that it wasn’t me breathing underwater but this device was in affect breathing, supplying the oxygen to my lungs, it help with the prospective which allowed me to be free in the water.

Understanding, that Jesus fills us, enables us and grants us both mercy and grace while loving us…gives us the opportunity to see things from a new prospective a freeing one.  We didn’t do anything but choose to accept the gift of grace.  The process of learning to live within the Grace God has so richly provided through His Son Jesus is just that a process.  Paul writes to the Philippians, “Not that I have already attained perfection or that I have already arrived, but forgetting the past, I press on…toward Jesus!”

Like learning to swim with a snorkel it does get easier…but you have to allow yourself room to understand that it isn’t you that is making water into air but that you are reliant upon the snorkel.  The same is true in faith, in learning and growing we must realize that it isn’t under our own ability that we are saved but we are reliant upon Jesus.  We are called to run the race diligently, prepare earnestly, be prepared in season and out to give the reasons for the hope that we have.  We are on a journey that requires the ability to rely on someone else…even when the culture tells us to be self-reliant.

Not that we will ever be perfect or never need reminding but there will come a day that as we walk this road called “Faith” that we will begin to live….What good did our pride do us? What good were our wealth and pretension? These things have all passed away like a shadow. They’re gone like old news. They’re gone like a ship passing through a storm-tossed sea: once it has passed, it leaves no trace of its passing; its keel leaves no lasting mark on the waves. That’s all disappeared in the way a bird flies through the air and leaves no hint of its path: it beats its wings against the thin air, dives with a rush, uses its wings to circle round—yet afterward there’s no sign in the air that the bird was ever there. It’s all vanished like an arrow that’s shot at its target: the air opens up as the arrow flies through it but immediately closes up behind the arrow, and no one can detect any trace of the arrow’s path. (taken from Wisdom 5:8-12 a book found in the Apocrypha). 

You are loved,

cj