Birthing the Sea

In February 2009, 48 high school and university students aboard the 57 foot Nova Scotia ship the SV Concordia, were sailing in rough seas 500 kms off the coast of Brazil when a bizarre wind – a microburst - suddenly capsized their boat. Within 20 minutes it sank.

The students and 16 staff members all escaped safely to life-boats and were rescued the next day by commercial ships, but they will never forget the unpredictable, untamable power of the sea.


No wonder the sea-going Greeks considered Poseidon, god of the sea, as moody and irritable, easily-offended and relentless in exacting revenge on his foes. No wonder other cultures viewed the Sea as the domain of Chaos.

But despite the enormous power of ocean winds and waves, Israel’s theology boasted that Yahweh was master of the Sea. The writer of the Book of Job imagines the sea, Yam, as an enormous infant confined in utero until it bursts forth out of the womb - 'Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb?' Job 38:8

As a young father I was present at the birth of all three of my children –and not one of them ‘burst forth from the womb’. They had to be pushed and pulled and prodded. Even then they took their sweet time. When a human mother gives birth naturally, the amniotic sac ruptures and about 3 cups of fluid drain out. But in the poetry of Job, the entire oceans of the world burst forth! What a baby! What a mother!

Who was this mother?’ Who broke her water to release this enormous child into the world? Rhetorical questions draw our attention to the obvious: for all its prodigious power the Sea is not the ultimate force in the universe. It came to birth through a loving, all-powerful Creator. This is the One of whom St Paul said, 'I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither the present nor the future, no power or anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'  Romans 8:38-39

Whatever fears threaten you today, remember the Mother/Father of all creation still rules the roost and knows how to look after her children.

Photo Credit:
Baby Love Birth Cener