Everybody's going surfing...?

Newquay in August is the place to be – if you’re a surfer: or, I suppose, if you’re just up for a bit of fun. More than 200 surfers from all over the world descend on the place to take part in the championships there: and a whole load of others go along for the party as well!

Newquay isn’t Hawaii, of course – which is a big pity, in a lot of ways. But though the ‘tubes’ (a technical term – picture the massive wave curling over and, well, there’s your ‘tube’) are hardly what you’d find in its Pacific island counterpart, and are in fact mainly rather tame, there’s enough to offer surfing of a sort.

It’s really not a very complicated thing at all. To understand, I mean. It gets a little challenging when you try and do it yourself!

You hardly need to be a surfing buff to know that when the right wave comes, you’ve really got to take the plunge (in a manner of speaking – you’re already in the water, of course!) and ride it to the full. Good waves aren’t like Edinburgh buses that generally come in threes. Miss your wave and you could have a while to wait!

In other words, don’t miss your opportunities.

Even William Shakespeare understood that as a basic rule of thumb: and he was hardly into surfing (well, presumably not). The famous words he put into the mouth of Brutus (yes, the self-same Et tu, Brute? guy) in the play Julius Caesar make the point well (even if the language is a little flowery and long – and the context just a tad less kind and loving than we’d like) –

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Carpe Diem, as they used to say when Latin was the language people spoke (whenever that was!). Seize the day! Take your opportunities.

Who wants to live their life ‘in shallows and in miseries’ after all? I mean, do we really want to spend our days footering around in a safe and sad irrelevance? Why paddle in the knee-deep, frothy waves, already broken, as they trundle up the shore, when we could be further out and riding like a ruler of the seas out on the rolling, curving breaking of the ocean’s swell?

Surf the wave! Seize the day! Take your opportunities.

I’m sure that’s what the Lord is saying to us here in these auspicious days in which we live. God has been at work down through the years and year by year the swelling waves of his great Spirit’s work among us here have grown their own momentum as they’ve rolled right up the shoreline of our common life.

That tide of grace is reaching now its highest point, its flood. If ever we would launch out in pursuit of all that God would wish his church to be, if ever we would hoist the sails, embarking on adventure with the risen Christ and sharing in his shaping of the future of the world – then now’s the time.

These are days when the tide of God’s grace is at its flood. This is the day of opportunity: this is the year of grace: this is the wave to be riding.

So here’s a simple ‘surfer’s guide’ to what you need, if you would ‘seize the day’ and ride the waves and take the tide of grace when it is at its flood.

First, get yourself a wet-suit. Or a swimming costume of some sort. In other words, you’re going to have to get wet: you can’t do surfing without getting into the water. You must make a pretty basic choice. Are you just going to watch from the shoreline, as others step out and embark on adventure with God? Or are you going to get yourself into the water and be part of the adventure too? Get yourself a wet-suit. Be open to all that God is saying, all that God is purposing to do, all that God will give.

Second, cultivate vision. You need to be able to pick out in advance the wave that’s there to surf: to spot it coming maybe fifty or a hundred metres further out. You get the picture? We need to learn both to expect and then to recognise the voice and call of God: we need to learn to trace those subtle, rolling movements of the Spirit of the Lord and thus be in position when that wave is ripe to break – ready to ride when the wave arrives: ready to travel on the crest of the Spirit’s movement in our world: ready to go where God directs and journey where he takes us.

Third, be bold! There comes a point, obviously, when you’ve got to get onto your board. And, yes, there’s risk involved. The risk you’ve picked a wave that comes to nothing. The risk the wave will take you where you hadn’t planned to go. The risk you’ll lose your balance and go tumbling down the ‘tubes’. Sure, there’s risk involved. Embarrassment at failure, maybe bruises from the buffeting you’ll take. Jesus doesn’t call us to be masters on the seas of his adventure in this world: just learners. He calls us to follow and accepts there’ll be failure: that’s part of the learning curve: that’s part of the risk involved.There comes a point when we’ve got to get onto our board and ride with him the Spirit’s rolling waves. That point has come. That time is now. That wave is here.

Don’t let’s miss that opportunity!