In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the boundless waters. Before the praise of our Creator was revealed in the colors of fishes, the scurrying of beach mice, the caws of gulls and the swaying of sea oats as they hold their dunes together in recognition of the Christ who sustains us, God saw good without limit that could be called forth from the depths.
Last month, the sun was well into its return to the sea when I slid my kayak into the public launch on the southern end of St. Joseph Bay, passing from the lands of the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve to the waters of the St. Joseph Bay Aquatic Preserve. Within five minutes of launch, a sea turtle as wide as my craft glided away from my approach.
A shark of considerable length granted no such courtesy. I am not in charge, not ultimately and not here.
Within 10 minutes of launch, my fishing line darted sharply to the left against the draining tide. Soon, I held a redfish, the sunset dancing in the fish’s sandy bronze scales before I sent it back to its ambush point. Though the oceans have risen and fallen more times than we know since God first spoke to them, I can still find God there.
My life story is forever tied to public waters and the lands they connect. As a tiny child, I pulled bluegill from Lake Eufaula.
My family fell so wholly for the Cape San Blas area that my wife and I got married mere inches from the water of the Bay, preserved as it is by a protective net of state and federal policies. My brother and I stole away to fish together later that evening, my promise to avoid sunburn in wedding photos fulfilled.
My father builds rods in his retirement. “Dan will have to build him a little rod” was the response through the flow of happy tears when my brother and sister-in-law announced they were expecting their first child while on our annual pilgrimage to St. Joe.
This past March, I tried to catch my breath from the bittersweet announcement of changing churches by booking a trout excursion while in Colorado with my in-laws. Surrounded by the unfamiliarity of ebbing snow, soaring eagles and rumors of mountain lions, I was able to land a rainbow trout so big that it made my world-class guide cackle.
Though I paid for his needed expertise, all my fish that day were caught in a stretch of the Colorado River where anyone is allowed to wade in and ask God to bless their angling efforts. Roughly 8,000 feet above my usual quarry, public access yet again allowed me to commune with the One who made me and from whom neither height nor depth can separate me.
In accord with Jesus’ first followers, my fellowship with God through water is not limited to lines and nets. My calling as a minister is to preach the flowing beauty that connects us back to the beginning, to the freed Hebrews coming up into new life, to Jesus going down into the Jordan in anticipation of how he would invite us all.
My childhood Bible bears the date of my passing through the publicly accessible waters of a baptistry, but my soul bears it along with my immersion in God’s oceans. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing students baptized in heated baptistries and the crashing waves of Panama City Beach, and I know that every drop that welcomed us is connected.
So the growing legislative push to sell public lands shakes me to my core because pollution, habitat loss and poor management need no help in limiting the ways we can connect with what God calls good. Private resorts and their curated experiences welcome only a privileged few.
But lower-income individuals are not only more exposed to the moments when we abandon our call to stewardship—they arguably have an even greater need to feel God’s goodness, that it might wash away the burdens our economy places on them.
God’s mandate to steward the world is a gift. It includes the God-given opportunity to unite across politics, economics, race and place to cherish God’s handiwork.
Not one fish or flower will ever care about the things we’re taught to use as classifiers. God taught them to rejoice all the same; the least we can do is maintain opportunities just as welcoming.
God does not passively create nor passively love us, and as stewards, we must put our hands in the dirt and wade in the waters to do real work—calling, organizing, volunteering, donating, voting, and protecting. Christ followers are tasked with telling our neighbors, “Come to the waters! There is good without limit, and all are welcome.”
May we be a people who say this about both our baptistries and all God called good.
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Geoff Davidson is a youth minister in Jackson, Mississippi. He double majored in religious studies and political science at the University of Alabama before completing an MDiv at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.
