Perhaps you’ve stood next to a waterfall and marveled at the volume of water cascading in front of you and the ceaseless roar that causes your insides to reverberate. Perhaps you’ve swum in the ocean and been caught in the churning of a wave hoping it will soon pass over so that you can rise to catch a breath. Roaring, churning, tumbling, pounding: the very words themselves conjure up feelings of both dread and exhilaration.
The psalmist uses these images to focus our attention on the raw power of God and the depth of his counsels. They are, after all his waterfalls, his breakers, and like God himself, they are unsearchable and inscrutable. Whether standing before them or actually experiencing “breakers” of life, we feel small and frail. Water, which should be the comfort of a thirsty soul, becomes threatening. Our soul experiences dread and turmoil. Yet paradoxically, waterfalls and waves call to us. They exhilarate us. We want to jump into something that is so much bigger than us. We long to be a part of it: to ride the waves and to plunge into the waterfall. Our souls thirst for God.
