A minor decision to make a major move…….I got my hair cut……..SHORT. Much to the surprise of the lovers of my hair (and not the lovers of me), I decided it was time to stop frightening myself on night dives when my hair had the tendency to sway back & forth in front of my face as if to scare the living daylights out of me. Coupled with the consideration of making so many dives this year, I thought it would be the most practical thing to do.

The whole of last week had been a crazy week. As soon as I got back at midnight of monday from the deployment of 70 Reefballs in Redang, I was besieged with calls from my project clients wanting their work copies, NOW. “Pam, write as if your life depends on it. I want an international bestseller.”……..”Pam, I need to fill the pages, get to work right away.”…….. Oh, okay. Before I could soak my dive equipment & call it a night, I had to plan out my work for the week so that I could sleep in peace.

I had to miss fellowship on Friday because of the scheduled extra rehearsal & it ended at midnight. On Saturday was a full day dedicated to students’ first pool session after which, one of them joined me for roti romalee & butter chicken dinner. Timothy & I, drowned our problems over a cup of ‘problem tea.’ I recalled the time when Tim was actively ministering in churches as well as playing gigs in jazz bars in town. He also accepted assignments from men who wanted to send a ‘live’ violinist/saxophonist in tux & all, to the office of their loved ones to present a song & flowers to them….OMG…..how lumm….. My ex & I would be present at his gigs to listen to his sax or violin playing, two instruments which I love & be filled with that tingly-all-over-sensation throughout the night. Unbeknown to me, Tim ministered to me in a way that I couldn’t be thankful enough to God for, at a time when I needed God’s touch through him. We went on diving trips together & it was at that fateful event at Tioman in 2000 that I came to know the host of my home fellowship now. Tim went to Australia to further his studies & continued to work there for 3 1/2 years. We reminisced about the time when we had pool sessions till doomsday & he couldn’t get it right; about the time when he was sitting on a bed reading & it collapsed, toppling him over; about the bright orange frog that landed SPLAT on his balding forehead…….it had been a long time since we sat down & spoke. I spoke fondly of Tim in his absence & laughed so much that it seemed like it was just yesterday when all three of us, jumped & screamed, hands flailing about at the frog on his forehead. We wept…..at the times when he mediated the rift with my ex, the time when he fasted & prayed like mad for me to have a breakthrough, the time when he upheld me in prayer when my mom had a stroke. How wonderful it is to have brothers & sisters in Christ sent in times of need to offer ministry & comfort. We wept & wept. God was with us.

Of course there were times when I was so frustrated with Tim. We had done almost 45 hours of pool sessions & he couldn’t get his confidence up…..sigh…..only from a BSAC instructor could he be so tortured. And the times when he spoke reason & sided with my ex & stood in the line of fire. He suffered as many bruises (emotionally) probably more than my ex did. We celebrated life & friendship at church when he joined me for the 11am service. So did Sen Hon. (Congratulations on being added to the Book of Life!) Much later, Sen Hon came to watch our performance with the vetting committee comprising of elders(founders) & oversight members of the church. I told him that he shouldn’t miss it since it was the only opportunity he had to see us in full costume & be presented with the meaning of Easter. He would be away to do his Divemaster course in Redang from the end of this month & would miss the actual performance. Seated right beside the aisle, on of our flag bearers swung the flag on his head & ooh, I’m sure he would change his mind about accepting Christ if he had not done so already! So much for getting people to church for an evangelistic event only to whack them for coming in! On behalf of the cast, I sincerely apologise for the blunder(though I laughed first, as usual….).

Through all our differences, exasperation, anger, impatience & error, we prevailed to preserve the fellowship with one another in Christ through prayer, acceptance & forgiveness to where God put us today. Just as every friend is sent for a time & a reason, I ask God to release them & let them come back if they value what they left behind. If not, I pray that they would experience God with other people & for His blessings upon them for all the days of their lives.

I was told that I’m very good at walking away. How can you not walk away when people who supposedly love you, cause you so much grief & hurt? When you once walked on the border of sanity, you would go into self-preservation mode, which is to stop allowing yourself to despair again.

What is a relationship without communication? What is communication without opening up? What is love when it keeps record of wrongdoings? I was having a conversation with God & I asked Him why do people resort to name-calling when they know they are saying things in spite to you? Why can’t people understand what I’m trying to convey? Why do things happen? Why do people disagree to agree? Why can I forgive so easily but others cannot? Why is it that when I manage to bury the hatchet, it gets dug up & poured over my head? If a written explanation is not good enough, I don’t know what is.

In my course of assisting in researches & writing about them , I thought about Creation VS Evolution & I came upon this article which is really worth a mention. I’m so glad to be working in God’s perfect architecture….!

God Describes His Design for the Sea
by Pastor Paul A. Bartz

In Genesis 1:9.10, we have the account of God’s separation of the land and the water, which resulted in the creation of the continents and the oceans. We know that God here summarizes what He did because in Job 38:4- 18 God provides us with more of the details of His design for the ocean.

As we read the details of Job 38:4-18, we see that God’s design anticipates needs which we could never have known about, had the design of the oceans been left up to us. In fact, many of the details about the design of the oceans given in Job were not discovered by modern science until the past few decades! Starting in verse 4 of Job 38 God invites Job to pit his wisdom against God’s. This section goes on for two chapters, but verses 4 through 18 deal with oceanography and the geology related to oceanography. In verses 4 through 6 God talks about His wisdom in placing the foundations of the earth and its measurements. Both of these are very crucial.

The earth, floating out in space, must still be solid. And the earth must be placed in such a way, because of all its water, that the tidal forces which have their origin in the gravitational force of nearby bodies in space, are not so powerful that the land surface of the earth is swept clean of all life twice a day by powerful tidal waves.

The size of the earth is crucial. The earth’s gravity must be strong enough to hold gases like oxygen and ozone which are crucial for life to exist here, and at the same time, the gravity must not be too strong or life as we know it would be very unpleasant, if not impossible! If the foundations of planet earth were set only a little closer to the sun, or a little further away, our water-cycle would not work as nicely as it does now, and again, life as we know it would be difficult if not impossible.

The earth, with its precious inhabitants, exists within some very narrowly defined limits, each of which has thousands of variables. Since we are still learning about our earth, it is clear that even with today’s advanced knowledge and with our computers, we could not place the earth in a proper place in space, nor could we make it the right size to fit all the limitations, which we would also have to design from scratch. God’s wisdom is indeed truly great!

No wonder, as verse 7 says, there was great praise and joy in heaven as God designed and built the world, carefully placing it in space. What a travesty it is to give the credit for all of this to the chance movements of some ancient explosion!

Verses 8 and 9 talk about the oceans themselves. When verse 8 talks about the sea “bursting forth, out from the womb,” we have much more than figurative language. We have learned that the earth has major amounts of water locked into the rocks of the earth’s crust. We are also just learning that even the deep rocks of the earth contain a lot of water. As God separated the land from the waters during creation, and again when the fountains of the deep opened up to produce the flood at the time of Noah, on a smaller scale today great amounts of water are coming forth from deep earth rocks. Truly, then, the earth may be called the womb of the sea.

In verses 10 and 11 we get into a very important subject that most people seem to take for granted. The sea stays in its place. The boundaries of the sea have been set by God. As we learn from the great flood at the time of Noah, there is a lot more water available to fill the seas. It appears as though much of the excess water is tied up underground and in the icecaps of the earth. We can thank God that He sets and controls the boundaries of the seas, or else, as some fear, there would be nothing to keep us from being washed away except a precarious chance balance of forces.

Verses 12 through 18 discuss the fact that the earth is a sphere (specially verses 12 and 14 ), and mention the springs in the seas, the depths of the seas, and the size of the earth again. All of these points, as we have discussed, have far-reaching implications for the conditions of life on this earth. And all of them are carefully controlled by our all-wise God. But all these points are offered to go beyond making the point that the earth is designed. If the earth is designed, as it very obviously is, by a Designer Who continues to care for it, then there must be some implications in this for our relationship to Him.

This conclusion should drive us to desire to learn more about Him and how we might have a meaningful relationship with Him. This desire should drive us to the revealed Word of God, where we learn of His love for us in sending His Son to save us from the consequences of our sin.

Actually, the science of oceanography was a result of the literal reading of Scripture. Psalm 8 describes the dominion of the coming Savior, mentioning that He has dominion over the paths of the seas and over the fish which travel these paths.

In 1855 Matthew Fontaine Maury, who is also noted as the founder of Annapolis Academy, was ill and resting in bed while his son read Psalm 8 to him. Maury’s attention was caught by the mention of paths in the seas, and he asked his son to repeat that part of the Psalm. He said that he didn’t know that there were paths in the sea, but if the Bible said there were paths, there must be paths. After he was feeling better he set out on a series of voyages that documented the paths of the seas, and the resulting book, Physical Geography of the Sea, is considered the first modern textbook of the science of oceanography. Since his time, it has been learned that these ocean currents often contain large schools of fish whose lives revolve around the ocean current in which they live.

And some say that the Bible is not a “textbook of science”! Since God calls this knowledge about the oceans “wisdom” as He questions Job, we know that we cannot separate science from wisdom, the beginning of which is the fear of God. And a Godly fear is only possible to one who is God’s own child through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This is why there are no unimportant facts in the Bible, and why all of the revealed word of God is true and accurate -inerrant -for the center of all is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Note: Creation Moments exists to provide biblically sound materials to the Church in the area of Bible and science relationships. This Bible study may be reproduced for group use.

Copyright © 1983 Bible Science Newsletter, Pastor Paul A. Bartz. Creation Moments, Inc. PO Box 839 Foley, MN 56329, 800-422-4253 www.creationmoments.com