The Lost Years (Part 1)

Whilst going for a run along the beach yesterday, Saturday 07 August 2021, I felt the Lord’s voice speak to me loud and clear.

Loud and clear about the journey since I got born-again, and about the here and now, there’s something about coming home that always sparks some sort of down-memory-lane moments for me.

As I was collecting my thoughts on this post-covid run, walk, try not to overexert your heart rate attempt, I suddenly realized that I was on a stretch of beach that is very familiar to me, it’s between Blue Bend and Bonza Bay in Beacon Bay. I often walk or run this section as I really enjoy the ocean, and for some reason I have always been game to run on sea-sand when many have despised it, but I must add as a sub-note, I am by no means a good runner, I just really enjoy running though, but we’ll save this for a future blog entry, the rationale behind this and how it all got started.

The ocean is this wide, vast body of water and I can lose myself for hours just staring at it, how incredible that God created this masterpiece. The thing that I love about escaping to the beach, and especially in East London, is that you have a 360-degree view of nature, pure and simple, un-hindered and un-built-up nature, I get to marvel at God’s creation. This is very different to my home city, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), as most of the city’s popular swimming beaches have no sand dunes and are marred by a landscape of sky scrapers, what a let-down when you’re swimming in the ocean and you look back and can orientate yourself by hotel instead of natural landmarks, this is no attack on architecture but rather just a comparison of how two cities are differently laid out, and I get very passionate about protecting our eco-systems.

Now that I have set the scene of my surrounds, it is very easy to understand why I hear and see our Creator so vividly in this place, and I started wondering to myself again, ‘God why do I hear you here so clearly here?’ (Almost a sense of agitation as I just want to run, but my mind is consumed by the Lord.) Then God reminded me of my early days, when I had just gotten saved, how I would devour His word, how I would feel like I wanted to internally combust because I need to share the gospel, and because I felt that I had no audience, I gladly came and preached to these sand dunes.

God was saying to me that because of the foundation that was laid in this stretch of beach, a prayer closet of sorts, that these dunes were literally reminding me and preaching back to me about my first love, Jesus Christ. I make no excuse for how deluded this may sound because I know that many of us experience God, His presence, and His voice in peculiar circumstances, and mine just happens to be at the ocean, and especially this stretch.

Friends, have you become discouraged, burnt out and feel let down? Go back to the start, you might not go a do-over, but perhaps you’ll regain perspective and find the source of forgotten joy.

God is for you. God likes you. God loves you!!

Love, Ryan