According to Wikipedia ….
An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water.
Because the density of pure water ice is about 920 kg/m3, and that of sea water about 1025 kg/m3, typically, only one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg is above water. The shape of the remainder under the iceberg can be difficult to surmise from looking at what is visible above the surface. This has led to the expression “tip of the iceberg”, generally applied to a problem or difficulty, meaning that the visible trouble is only a small manifestation of a larger problem.
Irene and I were out early Saturday morning running errands and enjoyed the cool, cloudy day. Her nausea remained at a low roar. She appears to be slowly gaining some weight, holding steady at 110-111 pounds for the last month. After dialysis treatment this coming Monday we’ll venture to UCSF to meet with the vascular surgery team for a fistula procedure consultation. This continues to be a dynamic journey because it is forever changing. If the kidneys do “wake up” and function again Irene won’t endure the fistula procedure and the dialysis treatment will be discontinued. As Hosanna Loh commented in a recent email, we pray that “He restores Irene’s kidneys”!!
In order to see below the surface of our challenges, sometimes we need to go DEEP and S.E.E. …. perhaps journeying through a “Significant”, “Emotional”, “Event”.
In other words, sometimes it’s only after we’ve experienced a traumatic or colossal event directly affecting us that we’re more receptive to the ultimate purposes of God. Perhaps a “felt need” surfaces through the ordeal and we’re able to see more clearly than before. Or, perhaps, as a Christ follower, God takes us into deeper water to make us a deeper person.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
Psalm 42:7The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.
Jonah 2:5He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.
Daniel 2:22
It is God who works in us and through us for His purposes and His purposes will, in fact, prevail. Our duty is yielding to His leading and even beyond that, LEANING into His LEADING. Therefore, we cooperate with Him and go where He wants us to go, trusting Him at unfathomable levels …. believing that His power is manifested in our weakness.
We also trust Him to draw us out of those deep waters, in His perfect time, as King David proclaims:
He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.
Psalm 18:16
So, when we see the tip of the iceberg, we know that there’s much more than what meets the eye …. with, according to Wikipedia, perhaps as much as 90% of it being unseen. But it’s often when we’re in that unfathomable depth of darkness, perhaps in our darkest hour, with the metaphoric seaweed wrapped around our head, that we truly come to experience the manifestation of His Presence and see His liberating hand at work in our lives.
Caminando con Fé
Dave
