Swimming is something I always loved to do as a child. All of my siblings swam including my mother. Growing up near a river meant we could swim as often as we wished. Once I moved to the United States, however, we no longer had access to a river. Instead, we began visiting the various beaches in New York and New Jersey during the summertime.
I remember the first time I went to the beach. I was so excited I could hardly sleep the night before. I carefully laid out my bathing suit and towel across the bed and my sister and I spent the night talking about how much fun we were going to have at the beach the following day. When my mother woke us up, I immediately jumped into my clothes and was ready to go.
We arrived at the beach and I was ready to explore the big beautiful ocean. As I entered and began to tread the water carefully, I found that it was very salty – quite to my surprise! In my childlike way, I tried to figure out why the water would be so salty. You see, the river I grew up near in the Dominican Republic was fresh. That river was used not just for swimming, but for bathing, cooking and washing clothes as well. Yet as I carefully lowered my little tongue to lap at the ocean, I could easily detect the salty flavor. “What made this water become so salty?” my young mind wondered. At one point during our stay at the beach I ran my hand in the sand underwater and I came across a small packet of salt. “Oh that’s how they did it” I thought to myself with a sigh of relief. The mystery was solved – I now understood why the ocean was so salty!
It is a wonderful process to watch a child develop. Children are innocent in their approach to life as they try to make sense of the complex world around them. When you are a child you understand things in a simple manner. The Apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child” (I Cor. 13:11a). As I got older I understood that the ocean could not possibly be salted with little packages of salt. Similarly, as a new babe in Christ, I discovered that I had a childish understanding of God. I could not fathom how He could love me so much that He would allow Jesus to die for my sins. I felt I had done so much wrong and had a difficult time forgiving myself. “How could Jesus forgive me?” I would ask myself.
When I was younger I thought that when my mother got mad at me she no longer loved me. As I got older I realized that she never stopped loving me even when she was not pleased with something I did. As I have grown in Christ, I have come to understand that God does not stop loving me either. No matter what I’ve done. It was just a child’s thought.