Dear Friends,

This week’s message is a bit of a travelogue about a worship experience that I had late Thursday afternoon, July 3, near Astoria, Oregon. I hope it refreshes you during these hot days.

Late afternoon sunlight floods over the Clatsop Spit. Everything is flowing at high tide. Five and six foot swells off the North Pacific crash on and over the South Jetty that seeks to prevent the migrating sands from overtaking the shipping channel at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The northwest wind blows in an uninterrupted stream off the open sea. It bends the beach grass and the pines to its will and scours the beach down to a hard pan depositing the excess grains in the dunes.

Great flocks of cormorants, scoters, and geese swoop and circle in looping joy rides. Their numbers are sufficient to announce their presence overhead by the rush of their wings even before I look up to see them.

Even though I park in a paved lot at the end of the road and mount a wooden observation tower, I am impressed that I am on the ragged edge between civilization and chaos. The tower platform sways in the wind. The waterfowl circle undeterred by human presence. A white surf line between yellow beach and blue ocean runs south to the hazy hulk of Tillamook Head.

The river bar to the north is a froth of white and silver-blue all the way to the dark green hulk of Cape Disappointment where Lewis and Clark first saw the Pacific Ocean in the fall of 1805 before they crossed over and spent a miserable wet winter a couple of miles east of where I am standing.

Clark mentioned the ceaseless roar of the ocean at the bar. He was right. I grew up with the sound of surf which typically consists of the “choo-thwack” of a breaking wave followed by the grumble and hiss of its surge and return on the sand. On calm days, there will be a lull before that cycle is repeated.

The sound at the mouth of the Columbia River is something unique. The Columbia has no delta to soften and absorb the crash of its entry to the sea. An average mass of 265,000 cubic feet per second of fresh water moving at a speed of eight knots sprays like the nozzle of a fire hose through the five mile-wide mouth into the oncoming Pacific tides. Neither ocean nor river will give way. The result is a constant maelstrom of churning currents and waves that frequently rise to 30 to 40 feet in height and higher in the worst winter storms. It issues an unceasing roar that is at once both exultant and terrifying in its raw and relentless power. I have never heard anything like it, as I walk along the beach at the end of the spit.

Engineers built a railroad out here in the 1890s to bring the 25 ton granite boulders necessary to construct the jetty. They didn’t count on the power of the winter sea to shift those boulders like one would move a couch in a living room. Finally, they put down enough rip-rap stone to hold the sand if not the sea.

This is the end of the Columbia River’s 1,200 mile journey from the Canadian Rockies. The river drains an area the size of France taking on water and silt from British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming ,Utah and Nevada along the way. The river has deposited enough sand along the jetty to extend the coast west more than a mile from where it was when Lewis and Clark were here.

The beauty of this place is treacherous. There have been approximately 2,000 shipwrecks recorded in this vicinity because of the rough surf and shifting shoals and sand bars. Every ship sunk represents a dream defeated, a mission failed, a plan frustrated. Many lives and fortunes have been lost since the intrepid American mariner, Robert Gray, took his ship, the Columbia Rediviva, safely across the bar in 1792 and gave the river its name.

Even with that danger, large commercial vessels make their way in or out across the bar approximately 4,000 times a year. They carry out the wealth of the inland forests, farms and factories in trade for the products of the Pacific Rim. Portland is a major Pacific port some 100 miles upstream from here.

This walk is everything I hoped it would be and more. Family lore has it that when my Mom and Dad brought me home from the hospital when I was born, a car window was open to the breeze off the Monterey Bay. I turned my face into the wind and smiled. It must be true because I have enjoyed facing the wind ever since.

Except for three surf fishermen risking a rogue wave out on the point, I am alone on this beach. The solitude is wonderful because this walk is a prayer. The turbulence, roar and swirling birds delight me in a chamber deep in my soul that opens up only on the most sacred occasions when I glimpse the Creator at work in love, song, and nature.

Only God can find that place in me. I could not possibly find my way there on my own. It’s always surprising to me when he leads me there. An anonymous psalmist knew what I am talking about. He told God:

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
(Ps 42:7-8)

My goal is reached when I reach the end of the spit where it turns to face the shipping channel. Here is where huge oceangoing tankers, freighters, barges, and cruise liners must thread through 15 miles of channel, 2,640 feet wide and 55 feet deep. They do this under the command of one of the rarest and most remarkable skilled occupations any where, the Columbia River Bar pilots.

There are 16 of these pilots,15 men and one woman. Each of them holds an unlimited master mariner license to command ships from the size of aircraft carriers down to fishing trawlers. Day or night, in good weather or foul, these pilots descend down ladders from helicopters or climb up from a pilot boat on to the heaving decks of incoming ships or transfer from a pilot boat to the deck of outgoing ships.

You can read all about their work and history at the website of the Columbia River Bar Pilots Association at this link, www.columbiariverbarpilots.com. Be sure and read the Smithsonian magazine piece in the “News” section of the website as well as watch the videos at the site.

Yesterday, at the Cape Disappointment lighthouse on the Washington side of the river, I watched a helicopter deliver a pilot to the deck of an incoming tug boat pulling a barge. I read the shipping schedule on line and timed my visit to watch another tug and barge from Coos Bay, Oregon be piloted across the bar. The red-sided barge is piled high with golden wood chips bound for a fiber-board plant at Longview, Washington.

The yellow pilot boat makes its way out to the open sea as I walk across the dunes. The pilot goes aboard and the tug starts into the bar just as I reach the water’s edge. The tug starts into the channel. The barge trailing behind. It is hard to get perspective from the flat beach but the golden chips stand out against the blue July sky. The tug is moving fast with the incoming tide and I am even with the barge when I get to the point.

The wind and the waves roar their praise. The birds soar toward heaven. I think of my God fierce in his love and astonishing in his grace. David’s observation is true:

If I take the wings of the morning,
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
(Ps 139:9-10)

I turn and start back down the beach through fussy seagulls feeding on sand crabs and the slanting light of the evening sun. Patricia is back in the car reading. I am thankful for her love and the freedom she has always allowed me for my rambles. She knows they are important to my well-being.

Conflict and turmoil have roiled around me for the past few months. The peace of Christ has kept me on track, but it’s my conviction borne of experience that God works through the wildness of creation to recalibrate us to his will and purpose. Despite the noise and the tumult and the narcissistic anarchy that can surround and beset us, God is not deterred from his watch over us or his plan to set things right in his time. Listen to this truth:

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who dwell in it!
Let the rivers clap their hands;
let the hills sing for joy together
before the Lord, for he comes
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
(Ps 98-7-9, ESV)

Snatches of long-forgotten songs rise in my heart stirred to life by the scene around me. One of them is “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me” an old hymn whose unmemorable melody owes more than it should to “Rock of Ages,” but whose words satisfy my heart as I remember them.

Jesus, Savior, pilot me
Over life?s tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treach?rous shoal;
Chart and compass come from Thee;
Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

As a mother stills her child,
Thou canst hush the ocean wild;
Boist?rous waves obey Thy will
When Thou say?st to them, ?Be still.?
Wondrous Sov?reign of the sea,
Jesus, Savior, pilot me.
(Edward Hopper, 1871)

We all cross rough waters and need these reminders from time to time. With a quiet but glad heart, I walk on into the wind.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Placespublished by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

 

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