“’This far you may come…’” Job 38:11a

Scientists have long pondered the mystery of the origin of earth’s water. One of the clues they look for when space probes are sent through our solar system is the evidence of water. Have you been to see the ocean lately and considered its vast and enormous depths and power? How was earth so richly blessed with water, and how is this water contained to prevent flooding the entire earth? The answer is simple: because God made it that way.

God challenged Job with a ‘longly’ worded query (in canonized scripture it fills four entire verses!) which accurately portrayed God’s authority, power, and wisdom:

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.’” (Job 38:8-11)

Of course, the answer to the question is, God Almighty. That’s the point… God was reminding Job of his own smallness within the grandeur of God’s creation (nevertheless, Job was uniquely significant to God, as each soul is uniquely significant to The Creator).

As God made a provision for life to be sustained by water, He also defined the limits of water’s potentially lethal encroachment. God “fixed limits for it”, using the continents… the doorways to new discoveries, nations, and peoples. Did God restrict anything else in the creation story? Perhaps you may remember God restricting Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God told them if they ate the fruit from the tree, they would die. However, they ate and continued to live. It was at that point, though, that something did die within humanity: innocence. Ever since the death of innocence, rebellion has been passed down to every child within the human race.

We get a picture of a child’s innocence for a couple of years… then the terrible two’s hit. Need I say more? “This far you may come” was not just for the oceans and seas. It is for us to see and appreciate the restraining love of God’s wisdom. God provided water as the source and sustenance for life; without it, no living thing would survive. In the same way, God made a provision for our thirsty souls to drink deeply from God’s reservoir of grace, sustaining our faith in Him. There are no restrictions to how often or how deeply one may drink. It’s free! And the source never runs dry.

Have a blessed day…