I have the privilege of living in the port town of Dun Laoghaire. Picture-perfect vistas when the sun shines and no less than a choice of 3 piers to walk on (and those are just ones I've discovered. I thought there were only two until a month ago.)
This afternoon I went down the elusive third pier and sat at the end for a spell. There were two seals about 20 metres off grunting into the air, propelling themselves through the water. They both dived under in different directions and I watched, waiting for them to surface. I sat for about 10 minutes scouring the water in the bay with no luck, wondering where they were and what they were doing under the surface.
Eventually I gave up and headed home, but the experience got me thinking about a difficult youth ministry experience I've been having the last number of months running a programme that I don't love with a group of young people who seem less than enthused to be there.
Like the seals, early into the course it felt like they dove under the surface, refusing to break the water to engage with the course of with what we were discussing. It frustrates me walking away now having not really had any proper interaction with them knowing that I have no idea what was going on under the surface. Like those seals, what was happening below was a mystery to me, and like those seals, that was the last I'll see of most of those young people.
But just because I didn’t see it, it didn’t mean there was nothing happening. There’s a whole world under the surface of Dun Laoghaire harbour I can’t see, and with those young people, just because I couldn’t see past the hostile to faith exterior, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t the slightest change of perspective happening. In 2 Corinthians it warns against relying on what is seen, “for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (4:18), so I’m choosing to trust that movement and transformation is taking place in the unseen. No matter how much I want to witness it on the surface.
