The Sea

My world has turned topsy-turvy.
    



Only one night ago we were sleeping in a building rented by the Mennonite Brethren Church in the fishing village of Ang Sila.  The rickety wooden upstairs—with no insulation and gaps in the siding that you could look through—offered little protection from the almost endless sounds of motorcycles and humanity at night.  And the mosquito net seems to offer little protection from other life forms that are active at night.

 

Fish-tile



Yet relief was just minutes away—just a short walk down a narrow street, dodging cars and vehicles—and I would be in the shade of a gazebo at the end of a pier—a pier that amazingly was blocked from vehicular traffic.  Here, in the quiet stillness, I could marvel at the life happening in the shallow waters of the sea around me.

Wind the clock forward a day.  I wake up in a sturdy concrete room on the 22nd floor of Rachaprarop Tower Mansion.  It has been a quiet, restful, night.  The glass windows and the vertical distance from the concrete soil below offer some respite from the sounds and hustle and bustle of life.


Comon Greenshank



   

Yet a short walk (and elevator ride) from here is a stark contrast to Ang Sila. Here I find myself in a convoluted maze of of concrete canyons.  A sea of a different type, with two-legged and two-wheeled and four-wheeled creatures swimming around in patterns that seem almost random, but that from a distance seem to take on the loosely organized movement of schools of fish.  No quiet stillness here.

(For a view of the traffic from our apartment, click here)
  

Crabs



Yet God is concerned about both of these seas.  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:26 NIV)



“God, give me Your perspective, that I might find the same restful stillness in a sea of humanity that I find in an tranquil bay.  And help me to have even more concern for the life-forms I see here than I do for the fish and crabs and birds and other creatures of the sea.  You have told us how valuable people are to you, I want them to be just as valuable to me.”



 

View from our Bangkok apartment