As I walked along the ragged hem of the ocean’s edge last week, I watched the sun rise over the waves that just kept rolling in.

And I could feel it, like my heart’s a metronome with the beating waves, feeling how battered all of us are in this old world these days.

Battered by the pounding swells — while your brave, pounding heart’s swollen with ache for all that now is, and all that will now never be— you can find yourself at the edge of everything.

And then, this one story comes to you like a love letter in a bottle:

Parts of you may feel wrecked by waves and a story you can’t control, and you may feel plain sick and tired by a merciless sea of bewildering, slapping swells of things you never expected — but you aren’t that unlike the explorer Bartolomeu Dias.

It’s always denying the state of things –that leads to a state of dysfunction.

Dias who sought a seaway to India back in the 15th century, only to round  what he thought was the southernmost tip of Africa, and have his ship about swamped and wrecked by a storm that would not let up.

Dias looked at where he found himself — and aptly named it: Cape of Storms.

Not some “Port of Peace” or “Haven of Rest,” because it’s always denying the state of things is what leads to a state of dysfunction.

In this real, busted world, the rest of us just have to keep living through what can only rightly be named a Cape of Storms.

You know exactly where you are and you are brave enough to aptly name it: a Season of Storms.

Why name anything only the obstacle that is — instead of the miracle that it could also be?

But when Dias got back to Portugal? He reported to King Juan about the dangers of the Cape of Storms. And King Juan shook his head over what Dias had named that cape.

Why name anything only the obstacle that is — instead of the miracle that it could also be?

King Juan had his eyes, his hopes, fixed on a way through to India. Who would dare discover the miracle of the seaway to India — if they only focused on the obstacles of any cape called the Cape of Storms?

You can be in a great storm — and still have great hope. Because you still have a great God — and He is always your only real hope.

So King Juan acknowledged that it may be the Cape of Storms — but it too could be the Cape of Good Hope.

Less than a decade later, the explorer Vasco da Gama sailed through the waves of that Cape of Storms, and though he lost one ship on those battering seas, he made it, he made it to India.

Your Cape of Storms — can still be your Cape of Good Hope.

Your Season of Storms — can still be your Season of Good Hope.

The reality is: You can be in a great storm — and still have great hope. Because you still have a great God — and He is always your only real hope.

Honestly: When you only believe where you are, is only a Cape of Storms, you may turn back.

But when you trust that even here can be a Cape of Good Hope, you keep turning to Him who is our only Good Hope.

And the way your Sea of Storms can still be a Sea of Good Hope is to actually be still… and know who is still your actual Hope.

Be still.

Every storm eventually runs out of waves, but our Hope never runs out.

Be still.

Be still … and know:

Every storm eventually runs out of waves, but our Hope never runs out. Because our Hope runs on the waves. Our Hope always runs to us, our Hope always makes a way to us, to carry us, to carry us through, by He Himself being our very way through. It’s why we’re to live in Christ, why He makes His heart our haven, why He says, “Remain in Me, stay in Me, live in Me.”

The way through the storms is to crawl right up inside the heart, and the promises, and the arms of Hope Himself, and live in Him, the only Way through.

Like a fish in the water, our soul can only live in the ocean of God.

You may feel thrown by the storms, but you’re being thrown into the very arms of Hope Himself.

The storm is real — but your great Hope is even more real.

The waves may batter, but your hope is in something better.

You may feel thrown by the storms, but you’re being thrown into the very arms of Hope Himself.

I stood there in bare feet at the ocean’s hem, and I could feel it:

A soul in storms can still feel wrapped in a cape of good hope.

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