I must go down to the seas again

The following is the editorial from the parish magazine for June 2009.


The one-time Poet Laureate, John Masefield, was fascinated by the sea. His first collection of poems was called Salt-Water Ballads and one of his most famous poems is entitled "Sea-Fever". It begins like this:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...

For a city dweller like me - Glasgow born and bred - the sea has always held a strong fascination. Being close to the sea was only one of many great things about my recent holiday down the Clyde coast at Gourock.

Being close to the sea for a couple of days brought me closer to the natural world in all its wonderful variety: the different kinds of seaweed, jellyfish, crabs, the sunlight on the water, wave patterns, sand and rocks, seabirds. And being closer to the natural world seemed somehow to make me feel closer to God.

As I watched the sunset over the Cowal peninsula and saw the sea turn purple and the sky a rich copper orange, I felt like a little child amazed at what his father could do. I wanted to point to the sunset and say to people in the street: ‘See that? My father made that.’

The writer of the Psalms shared my fascination with the sea and understood the sense of wonder that I feel looking out to sea.

‘The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea – the LORD on high is mighty.’ (Psalm 93:3-4)

‘There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number – living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.’ (Psalm 104:24-25)

As well as marvelling at the beauty of creation, I must admit I also marvelled at the many yachts, boats and ships I saw sailing up and down the Clyde estuary. I even managed to get on board one of the ferries for a trip to Dunoon. The sea was flat as a pond and there was a refreshing breeze out at sea.

I remembered how much the sea and boats are mentioned in the Gospels and I thought how often Jesus and the fishermen-apostles sailed on the Sea of Galilee as it was one of the quickest and safest ways of travelling in those times. It was a hard life working as a fisherman then - indeed it still is today - it was dangerous at times on rough seas, it was frustrating when no fish were caught, it required a lot of skill and knowledge to run a fishing boat and to know how put your nets down in the right place, not to mention the money to buy and run a boat and pay a crew.

I can’t help thinking that part of Jesus' meaning when he said to Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John that they would be made ‘fishers of men’ was that although their life in his service was going to be very different from their old lives, in some ways, it was actually going to be same! Being a ‘fisher of men’ isn't an easy life any more than being a ‘fisher of fish’. It can be dangerous, it can be frustrating and seem like a thankless task, it requires skill and knowledge to do it with any success, and it needs investment of time, effort and money to reach out to those who need to hear the gospel in meaningful, practical and realistic ways.

I hope that over the summer, wherever you are spending it, you too will catch a glimpse of the glory of God in his creation - on foreign beach or local park it doesn't matter for his glory is revealed everywhere. I hope that you'll feel drawn to worship him anew, refreshed and ready for life back in city where we have an ongoing call and duty to be God's people on the ground, learning more about Jesus, living out our faith, reaching out to the lost, and worshipping our Creator and Saviour God. We need rest in order to carry out the work Jesus is calling all of us to do: to catch more fish in our local ponds, streams and rivers.