Just Keep Swimming

Hello, Dry Ground friends. No, I haven’t forgotten or abandoned you. I’m a little shocked at how fast time slips by. Suddenly, it’s been two weeks. I don’t know where it goes.

Funny thing, time, since this post references Heaven where we won’t live by time at all.

Anyway, it’s been a challenge to keep my chin up in the past few… we’ll say months just to be honest. But God floods my life with different ways to encourage me. How awesome is He? He doesn’t have to do that, but He does because He loves me so much.

Again, anyway, when I’m down, a quick pick me up is to quote Dory in Finding Nemo – ‘Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Swimming, swimming, swimming…’

I’ve started to re-read the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn, and in his introduction, he sites a true life ‘swimming’ story that greatly encouraged me as well as some other people.  So I figured it would be a good thing to share here, in case others out there need a perspective boost, a mental hug, an assurance that God has not forgotten or abandoned you.

I’ll just type the whole thing here word for word. This is from Randy Alcorn’s Heaven, page xxii in the Introduction:

Seeing the Shore

Perhaps you’ve come to this book burdened, discouraged, depressed, or even traumatized. Perhaps your dreams – your marriage, career, or ambitions – have crumbled. Perhaps you’ve become cynical or have lost hope. A biblical understanding of the truth about Heaven can change all that.

In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland California. She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, he mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn’t until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away. At a news conference the next day, she said, “All I could see was the fog… I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”

Consider her words: “I think if I could have see the shore, I would have made it.” For believers, that shore is Jesus and being with Him in the place that He promised to prepare for us, where we will live with Him forever. The shore we should look for is that of the New Earth. If e can see through the fog and picture our eternal home in our mind’s eye, it will comfort and energize us.

If you’re weary and don’t know how you can keep going, I pray this book will give you vision, encouragement, and hope. No matter how tough life gets, if you can see the shore and draw your strength from Christ, you’ll make it.

I pray this book will help you see the shore.

Obviously, I would suggest reading this book. I’m also reading a devotional of his about finding light in the dark days of life called '90 Days of God's Goodness', and boy has that helped too.

But mainly what I’m trying to convey here through sharing this section of his book is this:

Just keep swimming. The shore is nearer than you might think.

(photo by photobucket.com)