The Spot He Keeps Rowing To

There is a man in a harbor town who rows out to the same patch of water about once a month, and there is nothing there.

I mean that literally. It is not a fishing ground. It is not near anything. If you sailed past you would see an ordinary stretch of open water with a headland behind it at a particular angle, and that angle is how he finds the spot, because he has no other way to mark it.

Something went over the side there, a long time ago. Not an object worth recovering. Something he did, and the throwing over the side was the day he finally brought it to God, and he remembers that day clearly and he remembers the relief.

And then, a few weeks later, he rowed back out to look.

He would tell you it was not to retrieve anything. He knows there is nothing to retrieve, and he has never once put a line down. He rows out, and he sits with the oars shipped, and he looks at the water where it went in, and he thinks about it for a while, and then he rows back.

A hundred times, over the years. Perhaps more.

His wife knows he goes. She has never asked him what he does out there and he has never told her, and there is a kindness in both of those.

Here is what I want you to see about that patch of water, because I have thought about him a great deal. The sea over that spot is deep. Not deep like a harbor. Deep in the way that means the bottom is a place no man from that town will ever stand. He knows this. He can tell you the depth. And still, once a month, he rows out and sits over it, as though sitting over deep water were a form of holding on.

That is you, shipping the oars.

You brought it. There was a day and you remember the day. And then you started going back to look at the spot, not to take anything out, just to sit over it, and the return trip has become its own habit, and the habit has convinced you that the matter is somehow still in play because you keep visiting it.

He did the casting, and He chose the depth

Micah ends his book with three verbs about God, and the last of them is the one people remember. Read who is doing the action, because that is where the release is.

He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.Micah 7:19

Thou wilt cast. God does the throwing. Not you. You did not put it over the side; He did, and that matters enormously, because a thing you threw is a thing you could in principle go and get.

And then the destination, which is chosen with care. Not into the shallows. Not onto the beach at the tide line where it comes back twice a day. Into the depths of the sea, which in the ancient world was the one place nobody could reach and everybody knew it. It is the most final address available in the language.

You are dealing with something God Himself put beyond recovery, in a place He selected for that exact property, and I am not putting a comfortable gloss on it: Micah 7:19 names the depths in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my telling you so who can settle it in a man who rows out once a month.

Notice the verb before it as well, because it does not get quoted and it should. He will subdue our iniquities. Subdue is a word for putting something under your foot, mastering it, taking away its power to move. So the sequence is: mastered, then thrown, then depths. Three actions, all of them His, none of them yours, and the last one is the address.

You have nothing left to guard, and the visiting has never once been part of the arrangement, which is written into the verse rather than being my sympathy for a long habit, with the Spirit of God able to reach a hand that has been on the oars a hundred times.

In my grandmother's house, when something was finished, it was finished loudly. The pot came off the fire and went on the table and that was the end of the cooking, and nobody stood over the stove afterwards checking whether it might still be going. Finishing is a real event. It has a moment. And in this verse the moment belongs to God and it has already happened.

I want to say gently, because this category exists to undo scolding rather than add to it: the rowing out is not a sin. It is what a person does when they have been given something too complete to take in at once. But it is costing you a monthly afternoon, and it has begun to feel like maintenance on a matter that needs none.

This is settled and it stays settled without a single further visit from you, because Scripture puts the casting and the depth on God's side, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that out over open water rather than leaving it in a book.