I believe, that at least once in everyones life, they have a moment where they experience something greater than life itself. The first time I experienced this was last summer, when a group of camp friends and I hiked up to Church Mountain to watch the sunrise. Now, everyone who has been to Camp Longhorn knows that Church Mountain is sacred. Our little slice of heaven on earth. To others, it’s where the camp gathers every Sunday for worship, but to me it’s where I truly felt God for the first time.
In that moment, watching the sun creep up over the Texas hill country, sky painted shades of pink and orange, I felt overwhelmed with joy and happiness, blessed that God allowed me that moment to witness his beautiful creation. I had no other way to explain it rather than God himself was with me in that moment. Now yes, he is always with us, but in certain times, we feel him extra close when we least expect it.
These past two weeks, I’ve been in Hawaii on a school marine biology trip, getting a first hand experience on what it’s like to study that certain field in day-to-day life. Along with several of my closest friends, I went on about 8 dives within the trip. This was my first time scuba diving in the ocean, so I was pretty excited to say the least. Getting to experience marine life up close is amazing. I was in complete awe at the beauty of the underwater world.
One of the dives we did was a Manta Ray night dive. Now, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting from this dive, but whatever my expectations were, they were completely blown away. Bright dive lights were laid on the ocean floor in what we call the “campfire” and all the divers basically sit in a large circle around these lights while the snorkelers float on top. Plankton, who are the filter-feeding manta rays food source, are attracted to the lights, thus the rays come and feed while we sit there and watch. So, there I was, 5’5″ 17 year old Georgia, laying on the ocean floor at 30 ft. deep in complete shock. These creatures, the largest being Big Bertha at 17 ft. wide, were so majestic. The rays swim extremely close to the divers, one almost smacking me in the face with its body.
I have one word to sum up that experience…God. Laying there on the ocean floor, I had no thoughts, just a feeling of complete awe and joy like I did on Church Mountain that previous summer. Being able to witness God’s creation at such a close proximity was so powerful that I needed a week to digest what had happened, and yet here I am still struggling to find the words to describe it. Ask my dive boat, for the first hour after the dive all I could say was “We just dove with Mantas…that was crazy!”
Now, looking back on the experience, I realize that the same God who created those Mantas, a creature I was in complete awe of, created me as well. The same God, who created those beautiful Manta Rays, who decided that the rays were perfect enough to put on this earth, decided the same thing about me as well..about all of us. In Genesis 1:31, the Bible states that
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”
God, who decided that the earth needed the Manta Rays, also decided that the earth was in need of one of us. He put us all on this planet for a reason, and each one of us has no idea what he has in store. We may believe we have our lives figured out, but God has his own ideas.
I could have never imaged that watching Manta Rays would have such a great affect over me, but God decided that in that moment, he would teach me a lesson that I needed to hear. So, here I am sharing that message with y’all. God, creator of all creatures great and small, looked at every thing he created within the first 7 days, everything that we consider breathtaking, and decided that the earth needed one of you too. So, let us go out and celebrate. Rejoice in His name for all of his creation because, you too are one of His creations. One of His great ones.
