The Beach Umbrella

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• Dr Eliezer Gonzalez
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Dec 20, 2014 2157

I have a knack for saying the wrong thing at the right time. Do you know what I mean? Like… really wrong…

I recently spent some time at the beach with my family.

We were at the mouth of a big river and the tide was going out to strongly to the sea. I was doing a bit of fishing from the shore, and the family was just returning from a walk along the beach. They had left their towels under a beach umbrella.

It was a really bad, cheap umbrella. It didn’t have a screw shaped end to hold it into the sand, so it kept blowing away all the time.

Anyway, while I was focusing on the fishing, I heard my family shouting and gesticulating to me, but I couldn’t work out what they were trying to tell me. I was never very good at sign language!

Eventually I turned around and saw what they were trying to tell me. Our beach umbrella had blown away and was in the river, heading out to the middle of the river and out to sea.

Since the river was deep and the current strong, I didn’t dive in to rescue it. Instead, another fisherman, a deep burly guy on some rocks, jumped in himself, and swam out to the umbrella and with difficulty brought it back to shore a fair way downstream.

As he clambered back onto the rocks, and he handed me my umbrella while he huffed and puffed, my first words were, “Thanks mate, but it was hardly worth it for a $17 umbrella!”

I shouldn’t have belittled my thanks after such a magnificently manly effort to rescue my umbrella. But I did warn you. I often say the most shockingly wrong things at the wrong times.

But here is an even more shocking thing. Are you throwing away your life for a $17 umbrella? What are you chasing in this world? Popularity? Success? A bigger house? A new car? Acceptance and recognition by the world? Love from the wrong places? Those things are just $17 umbrellas. Let them float away into the ocean. Don’t risk your life – don’t risk eternity – by chasing them. Stand firmly on the solid ground of what Jesus has already achieved for you. Don’t dive into the dangerous currents of earthly success for a $17 umbrella. It’s hardly worth it.

I guess you want to know how my fishing went? That was hardly worth it either.

I’m glad I’ve taken hold of the greatest treasure of all – Jesus Christ.

– Eliezer Gonzalez