Magnificence

Years ago a friend told me a story about fishing. He said that he’d gone out fishing for the day with another friend and as they sat facing each other in a small skiff, fishing poles in the water, he’d gotten a call on his cell phone notifying him that a friend had died unexpectedly.  It was more than a year after the fact when he told me about it, but still he choked up in the retelling of the story.  

“So I hung up the phone and we sat together for a few minutes staring at the water.  Then I said, ‘Well God, we could sure use a fish today.’”

Moments later they were startled by the sound of a whale spouting nearby. They looked up to see that a humpback whale had surfaced and was slowly glided closer to their little skiff. Then another whale surfaced with an explosive spout on the other side of them.  And then a third.

I suppose the argument could be made that the whales were not an answer to prayer. My friend had asked for a fish.  And instead whales came and scared all the fish away.  

But he experienced it as an example of the generosity of God.  “I asked for a fish and God sent us a pod of whales.”

A generous response to a simple request.

We were out on the boat the other evening.  The skies were overcast, with a few patches of blue showing through.  The waters were flat, and we’d gone out quite a ways to do some halibut fishing in deep waters.  We were sitting on the back deck of the boat, poles in the water, looking around at the scenery which we take for granted much of the time.  

We’d caught a couple of sharks.  But no “keepers.”  There were a few other boats off in the distance, but no one anywhere close to us. It was a lovely, still evening.  And every few minutes the silence was punctuated by the spouting of humpbacks.  A few ahead of us to the west.  Another at our stern slowly meandering its way along a channel to the east.   A couple more to the north of us.  

We often couldn’t see them.  We just knew they were there by the blows.  The spouts which explode loudly in the air, and reverberate along the water.  

I checked my line to make sure I was still on the bottom, and then reeled it in a few turns.  

We visited about the weather.  Hoping we weren’t going to catch anymore sharks.  Wondering if we should try another spot.  Squinting out at the horizon every few minutes trying to actually see the creatures we could so clearly hear.   

We commented about how flat the water was.  And what a lovely evening it was.  I said that I really didn’t care if we got any fish.  I was enjoying just being out on the boat on a peaceful evening. No one else particularly agreed with my perspective.  And we chuckled at that.

Later, we had started reeling in our lines, still without any “keepers” on board, when two or three whales started bubble feeding near us.  We’d spot the circle of bubbles breaking the surface of the water followed seconds later by 40-ton whales shooting up through the surface, jaws wide open, filtering krill.  

We watched in awe, and I was thinking about how stunning they are.  We see them frequently.  But the frequency of seeing whales doesn’t diminish their magnificence.  

Magnificence.  That’s the word I’d been searching for.  

I looked again at the water, the mountains, the clouds with shafts of evening sunlight filtering through in spots.  The wide open space.  I breathed in the stillness.  And marveled at the whales feeding all around us.

We were surrounded by magnificence.  

I was reminded again of the story my friend had told years earlier about asking God for a fish.  For comfort on a sad day.  Only to find his skiff surrounded by a pod of humpback whales.  

Eventually we headed back to the dock.  Still with no fish on board.  But it had been a successful fishing trip.  In the peacefulness of the evening we were once again reminded. Of the magnificence of God.