When I was a kid, my friends and I spent countless hours on the beach in front of our house, so close to the bay view windows it was like an extended front yard. At low tide that yard grew, stretching at times almost a full football field’s length out into the bay.
Those were the best days to be on the beach. We would slip into our rubber boots, grab an old ice cream bucket and head out to explore the subterranean world that was now exposed for all to see. As the tide receded it left behind little tidal pools shallow enough for us to wade through and see all the creatures that were normally beyond our sight and our reach. We would spend the duration of the tide collecting minnows and hermit crabs and baby octopi in our buckets full of sea water, and then compare our catches.
I remember that the first few times I did this, I always insisted on bringing the bucket home with me. I would leave it on the back porch, like a transplanted plastic tidal pool, full of the wonderful mysteries of the deep. But, each time, usually the following day, I was disappointed to find that all the creatures in my bucket had expired, and that the fresh saline from the shore beyond our house now smelled foul and swampy as though from a contaminated source.
My father, the biologist, taught me that the critters in my bucket depended on the food and oxygen and temperature control provided by returning tides, and that by removing them from their watery world I was in essence cutting them off from all the things that helped them survive and thrive.
All creatures have their habitat, that confluence of all the things that help them survive and thrive. Deer stick to the forest, fish the water, and you might say people, well, we need community.
In John’s gospel, which we’ve been hearing a lot from on Sundays, Jesus invites his disciples to abide in his love. He invites them to see his love as a reality that can be lived in just as birds fly through the air and whales slide through the water. And he also invites us in the same breath to “love one another”. The invitations always seem to follow one another. Living in community with a loving God and in loving community with each other. This is our tidal pool if you will, the place where we will survive and thrive.
As summer approaches and days lengthen, I want to reissue the invitation that Jesus gives to us this Eastertide –abide in his love, and love one another. Find time to be in this kind of community this summer.
See you in church!
Jered
