THE GREAT SPARKLING SEA

Oh, you should have seen the sky.

Perfect blue, clear and hopeful, hung with white summer clouds above the horizon.

Luke was driving. The fields either side were golden with sunlit wheat, waving in the breeze, as careless as a hot summer day makes anyone these days. At one point, the single-track road ahead seemed to climb into the sky. Path met cloud, the ridge of the hill on the top of the world. It just felt as though the sea should be there, waiting on the other side.

… oh the great sparkling sea! Tiny white sails on a cool ocean of deep, dark blue. Spray on the Cornish rocks and the sound of gulls above, wheeling and diving in the stillness of the air. Friends’ laughter as we race to the shore, filled with inescapable youth, fathomless hope, and unbreakable friendship.

That had been where I’d met Paul. Cornwall. He and his brothers had turned up that summer, cool and handsome, funny, kind, and above all, full of a kind of unusual, unshakeable faith. As a shy 22-year-old, it was all I could do to spin around them all in some sort of orbit, particularly around Paul, brilliant as the sun.

I would have had no clue about the next 25 years. That would have been too heavy for anyone to carry. But God gives us time, doesn’t he? One story leading to another, to another, and another, with each day leading to the next. Summer to winter to summer to winter. It’s the way of things; we’re not to know what lies over the horizon, only to enjoy watching the view unfold.

Not the sea this time.

This was Essex after all, and not Cornwall! And this was not the beginning; it was the end. Behind us was Saffron Walden, the picture-perfect, chocolate-box town where Paul had lived his last chapter. Ahead, leafy country roads that wound their way to concrete ribbons of motorway that would take us home. But I found my heart aching for the sea.

It had been very honouring of course. The cool, cavernous church was full of people who clearly all loved Paul, some from long ago and some from more recent days. I looked around as the worship band struck up the chords to the first song. Heads I knew threw hands in the air, others were in tears, still more looked sweetly towards the front, under prayer-soaked ornament and bright stained-glass. A cool breeze from the open wooden doors blew down the aisle. The sun, shielded by the vaulted roof and arched columns, burst in through the high windows and danced across the stone.

Moments later we were giving a standing ovation to a man who had impacted every heart and soul in the room. I heard my own hands collapsing in on each other. Well done mate, and thank you. 

Somehow that felt like the moment.

Later, as the boiling sun lit up the motorway and we fell silent in the car, I couldn’t help wonder about the sea and the ‘inescapable youth’, the ‘fathomless hope’, and yes, the ‘unbreakable friendship’. My friend.

When I next see you, Paul, I thought, maybe you can show me just how perfectly blue and clear the sky really is. And maybe over the hill, we’ll see that great sparkling sea together, and perhaps finally, after all this brokenness and pain, this longing and this sorrow, it will at last be summer forever.