Sermonettes from the Seashore

SERMONETTES FROM THE SEASHORE

Barry Blackstone

SERMONETTES FROM THE SEASHORE

Copyright ©

2019

Barry Blackstone. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

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8

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.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn:978-1-5326-8255-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-8256-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-8257-5

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

July 30, 2019

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgement

Introduction

1. Sea Sovereign

2. Seaside Sermons

3. Southern Sea

4. Kovalam, Kerala

5. Mediterranean Masterpiece

6. Amazing Aqueduct

7. Wave Wisdom

8. Mighty Mystery

9. Southern Sounds

10. Violent Voices

11. Seashore Sunset

12. Solid Sea

13. Herring Hike

14. Turning Tide

15. Bleak Beach

16. Changing Coastlines

17. Eilat Experience

18. Surf Snorkeling

19. Tide Thanksgiving

20. Soaking Storm

21. Divine Design

22. Weathering Winds

23. Cocky Cockleshell

24. Marriage Message

25. Weather’s Workshop

26. Beach Borders

27. Beautiful Breakers

28. Beach Benediction

29. Seashore Sorrows

30. Shattered Seawall

31. Barelegged Boy

32. Beautiful Beaches

33. Elegant Eagle

34. Eagle Energy

35. Sea Shore Salmon

36. Shoreline Smorgasbord

37. Scattered Seashells

38. Fashioning Fingers

39. Beach Benefits

40. Tide Therapy

41. Surf Song

42. Salmon Stream

43. Beach Bird

44. Ebb Experience

45. Valdez Vista

46. Washing Waves

47. Titanic Thrust

48. Ocean Organ

49. Handyman Handiwork

50. Life Lesson

51. Difficult Decision

52. One Ocean

53. Salt Sea

54. Sterile Sea

55. Sea Sunset

56. Galilee Galleon

57. Sea Site

58. Sea Surge

59. Tide’s Time

60. Downdraft Disaster

61. Full Flood

62. Sea Sand

63. Sandy Shore

64. Refreshing Reef

65. Wave-Washed

66. Seaside Sermonette

67. Seascape Shaping

68. Sand Sermon

69. Beach Breeze

70. Sand Sculptures

71. Beautiful Breezes

72. Peaceful Places

73. Tranquil Tides

74. Beach Boy

75. Sea Sounds

76. Wave Wreckage

77. Tide Treasure

78. Smooth Sand

79. Titanic Transaction

80. Footstep Footprint

81. California Coast

82. Sea Songs

83. Wave Work

84. Beach Breakers

85. Stilling Storms

86. Changeless Cliff

87. Flying Fowl

88. Fabulous Flowers

89. Smooth Stones

90. Stony Shore

91. Building Breakwaters

92. Southern Storm

93. Tempestuous Tide

94. Hawaii Hop

95. Scott’s Seaglass

96. Seashore Sunrise

97. Coastline Conversations

98. Idealic Island

Sermon From The Surf

I dedicate these ‘sermonettes’ to my brother, Michael Blackstone, who shared with me and my family his beach house on long beach island on the Jersey Shore. The renewal we received along that sea edge was just what the Lord ordered after the sudden departure of our son, Scott: that strand of sand inspired this devotional book.

OTHER BOOKS BY BARRY BLACKSTONE

Though None Go With Me

Rendezvous in Paris

Though One Go With Me

Scotland Journey

The Region Beyond

Enlarge My Coast

From Dan to Beersheba and Beyond

The Uttermost Part

Homestead Homilies

Rover: A Boy’s Best Friend

North to Alaska and Back

Another Day in Nazareth

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would not have gotten this book project finished if not for the editing and compiling by my friend and sister-in-Christ, Rosemary Campbell. I would like to thank her for the numerous hours and many days she spent reading and correcting the errors in the original script. Thanks again Rosemary for all your work; may you share in the eternal rewards of this book.

Introduction

I have just returned to the coast of Maine after a three-week sabbatical mourning the death of my first-born child. Scott was just 39 when he departed (II Timothy 4 : 6 ) to Glory. The illness that took his physical life was an aggressive lung cancer called Neuroendocrine Carcinoma. It took only six months for this canker to reduce my healthy, 189 -pound, six-foot, soldier boy (Scott had spent eight years in the regular Army and was in his third year in the Army reserves when the disease hit) to a 125 -pound, emaciated (think Somalia refugee), see-every-bone skeleton who couldn’t even get out of his own way or out of his recliner by himself; a man who just the summer before was working out daily and running mile upon mile with his Wilmington, North Carolina, unit and driving heavy equipment for Old Castle Lawn and Garden in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It was a devastating half year for me, my wife, and Scott’s only sibling, his sister Marnie. After the funeral we decided as a family that we needed to get away, be away from the parsonage of the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Ellsworth, Maine, where Scott had passed away on an early Saturday morning on April 1 , 2017 . It felt like a bitter April fool’s joke! For our retreat, refuge, and rest my brother Michael offered us the use of his cottage on the Jersey shore, and my wife and I and my daughter’s family from California quickly took Michael up on his wonderful gift. It was during that week (we spent the other two weeks with Marnie, her husband Josue, and our only grandchild, a boy named Judah, at their home in Salinas, just a few miles from Monterey Bay, by another sea) on Long Beach Island, one of the barrier islands off the east coast of New Jersey, I once again learned why God made the seas (Genesis 1 : 10 ). It brought back the times I had spent by a sea over my 66 years, and it is my hope and prayer that these short sermonettes will help you through a painful period in your life, by a sea or no sea.

Jesus often walked by the sea (Matthew 4:18), and He was known to preach and teach by the sea (Luke 5:3). The minute I walked down onto the 22-mile long beach in New Jersey I realized why my brother had fallen in love with the island and had eventually built a cottage there. The air was refreshing (a crisp, clear windy day), the surf was therapeutic, and the sand was empty of humanity except for one lone surf fisherman and another walker like me. It was a place a person could clear his head, think about the past, and reconnect with the Creator of sea and surf. I needed to reconnect because the last six months had tested my faith, my understanding of my Lord, and why His will was to take my son at such an early age. Void of distractions, empty of conflicts, and with time to ponder and meditate on the word of God, I took the time to hear from the sea and the scriptures at the same time. In my quiet, solitary strolls along Long Beach I heard again a still small voice (I Kings 19:12), a voice I had often heard when life turns its self upside down. Everybody now and then needs bit of beach to calm their nerves, clear their head, and sooth their soul. Over the years I have travelled around the world from Australia to Israel to India, and to countless places in our wonderful fifty states. I haven’t always found a sandy surf, but I have discovered enough to write this book. They will be short, sweet, and to the point sermonettes, lessons I have learned from dipping my feet in the various seas my precious Saviour created to help me during troubling times. Long Beach was only the latest. So take off your shoes, let the sand fill the cracks between your toes, lift your eyes toward the sea, open your ears to the sound of the surf, and be still, and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10). What does God want to say?

1.

SEA SOVEREIGN

Every sea where I have walked on the beach was created by the Almighty. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and THE SEA, and all that in them is. (Acts 4 : 24 ) What the early Church proclaimed, I believe. The mighty sea was not an evolutionary afterthought, a chance happening, or a circumstance of nature. I don’t believe in chance or circumstance, especially with something that is as mighty as the sea. A Divine Designer following a divine design created the sea, and every time I walk beside a section of it I am reminded of my blessed Creator, much like that first morning (April 18 , 2017 ) on Long Beach in Love L adies, New Jersey.

The gulls were tapping into the wind currents coming off the Atlantic Ocean as they soared along the surf edge looking for breakfast. Their loud cries could be heard above the pounding surf as their white plumage was ruffled by the mid-April breezes. A small flock of sand darters walked ahead of me scurrying in and out of the surf pecking away as they darted here then there seeking a beach breakfast of their own. Occasionally the tide would get a bit close so the tiny birds would take to flight. It seemed as if one flew, they all flew, but not far, just down the beach a ways, and there they started again their unending, continual searching for a scrap of food the waves might deposit on shore. As I looked up the beach and then back down the beach the way I had come, I could only see a few other individuals wandering as I was, but far enough away to make me believe I had Long Beach all to myself. It was then a deep, abiding peace swept over my spirit. I had felt this kind of peace before on the beaches of Florida, India, California, and Israel. When you go through the death of a child, peace isn’t something that comes regularly or easily. Trauma and turmoil are more often the feelings one feels, but despite the roughness of the sea and the roaring of the waves, there is a profound solitude that comes from an isolate strain of sand by a sightless sea.

I deliberately walked as close to the sea edge as I could without getting my feet wet. I wanted to be as close to the grandeur of the water as it lapped in rhythmic order against the sandy beach. All the sounds of the city behind the duns were erased. I heard no human voice, no barking dog, and no laughing kids. My brother told me I would like Long Beach in April because it was crowd less, void of humanity. In the summer the beach was packed, but in the cool of an April week few ventured onto the beach let alone onto the island. So everywhere I looked, I alone saw the splendor of the surf, the beauty of the beach, and diagram of the duns. The loveliness and loneliness of God’s divine design relayed to my conscientiousness the goodness and grandeur of my God!

It is in such moments of inspiration and interlude that one realizes the Father does know best, even when that best is a period of separation from your beloved son as the Almighty Himself also experienced (Matthew 27:46). When one looks out into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, void of anything (though for a few brief moments I did see a passing cargo ship) yet filled with the majesty and might of the eternal God, one feels so small beside the sea. But are we any bigger beside God? It is on walks like this we get an insight into the working of the Father. If He created the sea (and I believe He did) and if He created Scott (and I believe He did), then He has the right to use either to His honor and glory, and according to Paul to our good (Romans 8:28). That first walk on Long Beach went a long way in settling my troubled spirit and traumatized soul.

2.

SEASIDE SERMONS

Some might find it strange my love of the sea and the draw I feel to the ocean, any ocean (I have been to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans). I was raised in landlocked northern Maine, I have a wonderful affection for any course by a beach, and I get terribly sea sick on any boat.

Raised on a potato/dairy farm in Maine’s northern most county (Aroostook), I was in my thirties before I spent any time near a sea. In actuality, it wasn’t until I moved to an island off the downeast coast of Maine that I began to hear God’s sermons from the surf, God’s sermonettes by the shore, or God’s sermonizing through the sea. It was only then that I understood these words from the pen of Mark: And He (Jesus) began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto Him a great multitude, so that He entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in His doctrine (Mark 4:1-2). In a sun-kissed strand of sand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee Jesus shared with His congregation. On that day in the sea, in the sun, on the sand, and in the surf Jesus shared one of his most famous parables, the sower and the seed (Mark 4:3-20).

There are times when the Almighty will not use the Bible to talk to us, but will use His creation: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork (Psalm 19:1). I learned at a very early age from my father to look and listen for God in nature (Job 12:7-9), but in my boyhood those heavens and that firmament were made up of fields and forest, hills and hallows, northern lights and nor-easters. I loved to take long walks through grass, leaves, and soil. Walking along a sea edge was as foreign to me as walking on the moon. Mine was a world of birds and butterflies, dogs and dandelions, cows and chickens. I knew a lot of dry land (Genesis 1:9), but nothing about seas (Genesis 1:10). That is until I moved to Moose Island, a small island in Passamaquoddy Bay in Maine’s eastern most county, Washington, and the Washington Street Baptist Church in Eastport, Maine.

For five years I lived on that rock-bound island and it was there I fell in love with the sea and learned to listen to the lessons of a wintry storm in a watery bay. In the pounding surf I heard the stormy voice of God. In the howling of the ocean wind I heard the undertones of God. In the rise and fall of the twenty-foot tides I heard the still small voice of God. It was there I got a chance to walk the seashore and watch the awesomeness of the Almighty unfold with each changing tide. It was not the first time I had been near the ocean because in 1972 I dipped my feet in the seas off Melbourne, Australia. I had played a number of times in the beaches of southern Maine, but it wasn’t until I strolled Greenlaw Beach that I discovered God’s sea sermons. Over sixty months I watched the faithful rise and fall of the tides, and I found again the faithfulness of God (II Timothy 2:13). The inlets and coves around Moose Island and its many beaches highlighted for me again and underlined for me again the mighty God that I was serving.

As I recall the past and remember other trips to God’s shoreline, Long Beach is just the latest as I also remember Casperson Beach in Florida, Eve’s Beach in Kerala, Caesarea Beach in Israel, Huntington Beach in California, Herring Beach in Canada, and Old Orchard Beach in Maine. It is my prayer that these sermonettes will last longer than the footprints in the sand I left as I walked with God by the seashores of my life.

3.

SOUTHERN SEA

The news from 262 Flinders Lane (the location of the United Aborigines Mission in Melbourne, Australia) was disappointing. We had been accepted as summer missionaries for ministries in Western Australia, but a train strike delayed our departure to a place called Cosmo Newbery. So now what? It was then Bob and I learned it is not now what? But now wait! It was then we also learned that you can do a whole lot for the Lord while you are waiting upon the Lord . (My cousin Bob Blackstone and I were in Australia on a 6 8 -day short-term mission’s trip in the summer of 1972 . We had arrived in eastern Australia with only one contact and that contact had directed us to a mission that worked with aboriginals in the western part of the country. While waiting for a cross-country train ride, I first learned what a trip to the sea can do for a doubting spirit.)

After the stress and strain of our last few months at collage (my junior year and Bob’s sophomore year at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina), the added pressure of planning a summer mission trip to Australia (our first time out of the United States), and the jet lag of flying halfway around the world (literally half-way around the world from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere), the good Lord knew we needed a bit of rest before we faced the harsh conditions of the Gibson Desert. So He allowed us ten beautiful days in Melbourne ministering and being ministered to by some very godly people. We had hardly hit the ground when we were taken to a youth camp by the sea called Mayfield where we became counselors to a group of Australian young adults. One of the first postcards I sent home was to my girlfriend and future wife, Coleen. This is what I wrote about Mayfield: I thought I would get a few postcards off to the folks. Tell your folks I will try to get one off to them, but I have run out of them and we are out-of-touch with the city now. We are working at a camp by the sea. It is a youth camp. I have a cabin of five guys mostly my age. We have had a great time. Mr. Garlock (Frank Garlock, the founder of Majesty Music and a teacher at Bob Jones at the time, was in Melbourne, unbeknownst to us. You can imagine Bob’s and my surprise when we walked into the chapel and saw a familiar face) spoke last night. He is going to be here today and tonight and is showing Gateway to a Miracle [Bob Jones’ promotion film at the time]. So it is a little BJU here this weekend. We went out touring yesterday; saw some great country; got some good pictures. I wanted you to know that I wrote our names in the sands of the Pacific. I did this on a beach at the southern-most point of Australia!

The weekend Bob and I spent in a camp by the ocean allowed us to mount up and soar for the rest of the summer, just like Isaiah promised: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31) The verse was our society verse. Both Bob and I belonged to Basilean, a boys’ society at Bob Jones University. At every meeting we would quote Isaiah 40:31 so by the time Bob and I got stranded in Melbourne, we knew it by heart. But it was in Melbourne that it got into our hearts. And it was on a beach in Melbourne I came to understand that like Asher (Judges 5:17) we are not to continue . . . on the sea shore . . . , but only use the seashore for a place of rest, recovery, and renewal for the ministry before us. I did that on my first seaside visit and every seaside visit since including the one I took to Long Beach, New Jersey, to refocus since the passing of my son, Scott. Seashores are not for residing but for restoring.

4.

KOVALAM, KERALA

Russ Coffin, a deacon of the Emmanuel Baptist Church and myself went on a short-term mission’s trip to India to dedicate a sanctuary and a parsonage built by funds given by the people of our assembly in Ellsworth, Maine. The second full day in India was divided between tourist things and ministry things. India has always been full of surprises for me. Despite the advance schedule sent to me by Shibu Simon (president of the India ministry), I was immediately surprised when Shaju Simon (his brother) told us that we would be staying in the Trivandrum (where we flew into) area for our first weekend in Kerala. Once I realized we were not heading directly to Kangazha (home town of the India ministry Emmanuel had been supporting for over a decade), I began to understand just how the good Lord was answering one of my India