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By necessity, our traditions while living in Indonesian are always a little different than in the US. One of our Thanksgiving traditions that developed a few years ago is the annual lobster dive. Since Thanksgiving Thursday is not a holiday in Indonesia, our Thanksgiving feast usually takes place on Saturday. As we prepared for our Friday night dive, we found ourselves setting up our equipment in the dark because of a few delays. When we finally managed to get in the water we discovered a couple of important principles - 1) flooded dive flashlights are a bad thing when you are doing a night dive, and 2) a school of baby jellyfish hanging around to observe your dive buddies "un-flood" the flashlight isn't much fun either. I'm literally still chafing about that. But, eventually we did begin our dive - and there the problems ended!

After we had been underwater swimming around for only about 5 or 10 minutes, I came upon a pair of cuttlefish (or is that "cuddle-fish"? Feel free to write if you have questions on the mating habits of cuttlefish). I called my 3 dive buddies over and we spent the next 10-15 minutes watching a National Geographic moment in progress. While it's hard to top something like that, the awesome sights that followed just made it better. My buddy Brad had said before the dive that he hoped to see a parrot-fish asleep in its cocoon. We saw two that night! The second one added the cool effect of having a starfish climbing on the outside of the transparent bubble that the parrot fish makes when it sleeps! I even enjoyed laughing at my dive buddy Brad trying to fend off a 2-foot sea-bass. I have to confess that in my quest for revenge from an incident a couple of years prior, I found myself leading the monster in his direction with my flashlight beam. Add to all of this a leopard-shark, s!
lipper lobsters, crabs, scads of shrimp and other creatures, as well as 3 rock lobsters in the bag, the dive couldn't get much better.

About half-way through the dive I thanked the Lord for his creation and only half-expectantly said, "the only thing that would make the dive better, Lord, is to see a stingray." On the swim back, still giddy at having seen some neat glimpses of God's creativity, I was nearly out of air and pretty much had my mind set on the swim back to the beach. I headed to the surface, and as I was swimming along the top, out of the corner of my eye I saw something flat move across the coral. When I went down to the coral to investigate I had gotten the “desire of my heart” - my blue-spotted stingray. Not exactly a miracle, and easy enough for a skeptic to explain away, but to me the simple event spoke volumes. God hears, and he enjoys seeing His children relish in the “coolness” of their Father. And speaking of children, you won't convince my boys that it was a coincidence (read on to part 2).

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
Psalm 37:4

Hearing their dad talk about all the cool things that happened with his dive buddies on Friday night, you can understand Creston and Ethan wanting to learn to dive. I had promised to take them to the local pool on Saturday to teach them a little more about diving and let them use up the remaining air (from the spare tank that we had rented). You could almost hear their hearts breaking when we got to the pool on Saturday, and even though it should have been open, the gate was locked and no guard was around to let people into the pool. Seeing the people that had already been waiting for 10 minutes, and feeling exhausted by an onset of malaria anyway, I secretly thanked the Lord and convinced the boys that it would be better to try again the following day (Sunday). “Surely the pool will be open tomorrow,” I said. The boys reluctantly agreed and we went home to prepare our turkey and lobster feast for 19 other guests.

Imagine the disappointment the next day when we arrived at the pool after church, more than an hour after the pool’s "opening time" and again, found the gate locked. After banging on the gate and calling out for a while, I finally gave up and we sat back in the car, Creston in tears from disappointment. Not able to give much comfort to them, I simply asked them what they wanted to do now. They left it up to me, and I felt something in my heart saying, "Pray about it."

I am always looking for a teachable moment, but I have to confess that was not the one I had in mind. I was thinking to myself, "There is no way somebody's going to come. I’ve already banged and yelled. I don't want to squash their faith on top of the disappointment they already feel." But the urge would not go away no matter how much I rationalized. So I silently told the Lord, "It's up to you to do something about this. What am I supposed to do when nobody shows up?" I then asked Creston, "Should we pray about it?" He just nodded through his tears and asked me to pray. I prayed for someone to come, and of course, felt the need to protect myself and the Lord with the line, "…But we're ready to accept whatever you want us to do, Lord, if you don't want to bring somebody.”

I then asked the boys, "How long should we wait?" Creston said five minutes, and then Ethan added, "Five minutes isn't very long, how about ten?" I was at least somewhat relieved for the extra window of opportunity and agreed. As I sat occupying the boys with a racing game on my phone, a few people walked by, and suddenly Ethan said, "Dad, I think he's opening the gate." I looked around, saw a man at the gate, and got out of the car to go investigate. Sure enough, a man that I didn’t recognize as a guard who worked at the pool unlocked the gate, assured me that nothing was wrong with the pool and that we could use it, and then continued down the steps to the guard-house. When I got back in the car where the boys were, I looked at my watch - six minutes had passed (including my question and answer time with the guard). We hadn't really even needed the extra five minutes after all.

Please don't think me unspiritual when I confess that I was a little surprised. I figure the guard actually arrived at the original five-minute deadline. The odds somehow seemed against my "gamble". But I guess it always helps the odds to know someone "on the inside". The Lord obviously had plans of teaching something more important than scuba diving to His children on Sunday.

Another coincidence, do you think? Well, I don't think so, but if someone can prove me wrong, I'm booking my trip to Vegas!! Otherwise, I'll just revel in the fact that God actually hears and cares about something so "insignificant." I wonder if God really likes scuba DIVING that much - or could it be that He just cares about the scuba DIVERS???

“If the Lord is the thing you really want, He’ll give you as much of Himself as you are willing to take.”
(Psalm 37:4 - Mike’s paraphrased version)