My attention was drawn to a tidal rock pool.

This particular pool was above the average tide height so it was only refreshed on higher tides and in storms.  There were crabs and small fish with a few anemones dwelling there.

The creatures living there could be clearly seen and were very vulnerable to any land based predator but they were "safe" and knew all of their territory.

Then my gaze was directed to the ocean.  Deep, fathomless and full of life of all sizes.

The rock pool has the appearance of safety. Yet if the summer were very long and dry, the pool will shrink in size and there will be fights just for room to live.  The weak will die.

If you begin to grow in a rock pool it will not be long before you either starve or are picked off by a hungry predator.

To the denizens of a rock pool an extra high tide or storm is both a blessing and a fearful time.

The Tide may bring new occupants with different habits from those they are familiar with.  It may be a wonderfully refreshing time since there is new and fresh water flowing into the pool, yet the tide will eventually recede and the storm abate. Things will return to how they were before or...........

The Tide can be an opportunity to swim into the Ocean... a place filled with fathomless depths and untold wonders... and, to rock pool citizens, many fearful things.

In the past I have prayed for revival, yet it seems to me that I often missed the point. Often I have prayed for the Lord to refresh and feed me while the oceans of His love have remained waiting for me just beyond the rocks. Because of fear and unbelief it is easy to become afraid to leave the familiar surroundings I have grown comfortable in.  I am forced to wait for storms or the occasional extra high tide  to refill my pool.

Yet His purpose for the extra high tide and storm is not to refill my little pool but to get me to move into the limitless depths of the oceans of His Love.  I cannot really grow in the pool.  There are NO large fish found in rock pools. Yet out in the fearful depths I am out of my depth and cannot see the bottom.  There are unseen dangers that in my fear I think will harm me.  In His Love there really are limitless depths and I will lose many things, but in gaining Him, I find that the "dangers" were imaginary.

I think that the "revivals" down through the centuries have been "high" tides.  They are not supposed to fill the pool we live in but draw us OUT of the pools into His ocean of Love, into Him!

You can control your pool, the ocean cannot be controlled. (If you  are in control you are likely in a pool.) We can know every inch of our pool area, but in the ocean we will find it is new every day.  Like His Love; ever the same but deeper and new.

Like Ezekiel's river that flows from the Temple, the Fathers Love deepens as it flows, beckoning to us to come deeper in... The Spirit and the Bride say come!