Island Moments

’ The burden of the desert of the sea.” — Isaiah XXI. I.

There is a burden in all vast things; they oppress the soul. The firmament gives it; the mountain gives it; the prairie gives it. But I think nothing gives it like looking on the sea. The sea suggests something which the others do not — a sense of desertness. In the other cases the vastness is broken to the eye. The firmament has its stars, the mountain has its peaks, the prairie has its flowers; but the sea, where it is open sea, has nothing. It seems a strange thing that the prophet, in making the sea a symbol of life’s burden, should have selected its aspect of loneliness. Why not take its storms? Because the heaviest burden of life is not its storms, but its solitude. There are no moments so painful as our island moments. One half of our search for pleasure is to avoid self-reflection. The pain of solitary responsibility is too much for us. It drives the middle-aged man into fast living, and the middle-aged woman into gay living. I cannot bear to hear the discord of my own past. It appals me; it overwhelms me; I fly to the crowd to escape my unaccompanied shadow.

Unaccompanied r Thou art mistaken, O my soul. Never art thou so near to land as when thou hearest the discord of the waves. Why do the waves sound discordant when thou art alone with conscience r Not because thou art far out to sea, but because thou art closer to the shore. There is a band of music on the shore, and it strikes upon thine ear. It is the land-music that makes the seadiscord. Why is it that in the crowd the jarring is not revealed? It is because the music is not heard there. Thou canst never hear discord until thou hast first heard music. There are sounds of melody in the Father’s house before the prodigal reaches land. He becomes seasick when he is homesick, and his home-sickness is the sight of land. It is nearness to thy God that makes thee long for Him. It is the murmur of the New Jerusalem that reveals thy solitude. Elias is come already. The sea has become a burden because thou hast caught sight of the coast; it is by the light of heaven that thou learnest the loneliness of the deep. Thy desert is the shadow of God’s city; thy discord is the echo of God’s music; thy silence is the answer to God’s voice; thy weariness of the wave is thy vision of the outspread land. Thy burden is the promise that there shall be no more sea.