Undersea Refuge and Strength
I stood on a fishing dock in a shallow lagoon that spilled into the Gulf. There, I spotted a stingray and a jellyfish, and then came the surprise of finding dozens of hermit crabs. They took refuge under the dock and clung to sand shaded from the hot Alabama sun. A hermit crab’s vulnerability gives her strength. She takes up a shell covering, admitting she’s weak, and then she becomes strong. This tiny sea creature reminded me of the Christian life. In our weakness we depend on Jesus, and we gain him as our strength.
Strength in Weakness
Before I depended on Jesus, my story meant strength in my own efforts. I tried to please God. I offered up prayers or good deeds, seeking to be righteous in my own strength. Then I read about Jesus in John’s Gospel and came to understand why he came and walked the earth, why he sacrificed his life, died, and rose again.
Before any of us trusted in Christ, we were at odds with God. On a good day, we imagined ourselves as well-meaning, but if we stood in front of a perfect God, we knew ourselves as broken, marred, and weak. Transformation happened when we saw our sin and admitted to its horrors—to our weakness. We repented. We believed and responded to the gospel and found ourselves covered in God’s grace. There we stay, humbled and dependent, grateful to be saved.
Here in the lagoon, away from crashing surf, the hermit crabs find rest. I’d always pictured the Gulf as calm and flat, yet storms over the sea conjure up swells that slam the shore. Hermit crabs are carried by tides to places of refuge like lagoons and estuaries.
Crustaceans are tough, but hermit crabs lack strength in their flimsy tails. God created hermit crabs to defer to weakness and then salvage an empty seasnail shell as a covering. They carry with them a home and a fortress. Into their shell they retract, especially when beach walkers pluck them from the sand.
A picture of the gospel shows up in the life of a needy hermit crab, for as we, too, defer to weakness, we gain a covering in Christ. Jesus, God’s Son, covered us when he took the penalty of sin on the cross. Like a strong and new shell, he gave us a new and permanent status. Our strength and refuge derive from “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3:22).
Sometimes it’s a slow process to understand these biblical truths. Hardships like storms pound us into the rugged shore. We come up short, lacking, ashamed. Refuge surfaces in the shade of the cross because there, in the moment Jesus said, “It is finished,” he secured our salvation (John 19:30). In response, we surrender our feeble attempts to be religious, wise, strong, or good enough. Now God declares us good and right because of his Son in us.
It’s instantaneous. Just like a hermit crab takes on its shell, vital and strong, we take on Christ. In our weakness, we exclaim like Paul the Apostle, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Strength in Him Who Is with Us
Despite this guaranteed covering we have in Christ, we tend to forget his presence with us.
We are like a tiny hermit crab pulled by the tide and flailing in a vast ocean. The Gulf stretches into the sea where whales travel the length of continents, and the Mariana Trench dips 36,000 feet deep. Yet in Christ, God promises to accompany us, uphold us, and never leave us. Jesus journeys with us. And because we’ve been given this promise, we hold fast to him. We are weak and we fail, but in each instance, repentance is a restart, positioning us to rely on Christ, our strength, just like a hermit crab admits reliance by retracting into that great and sturdy shell.
From the fishing dock, I bent down and scooped up an unsuspecting hermit crab. I steadied my open hand and lay the shell flat. As the hermit crab grew confident, her tiny, maroon-colored legs inched out from under the shell and stretched across my palm. Then, snap! She caught sight of her misjudged surroundings and disappeared back into her home.
I tried to lift another, but this hermit crab, too, proved wise. She refused to be coaxed into the salty air, so I placed her back on the cool sand under the dock.
“For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). From a well-wisher, these words could sound cliché. But for God’s children, these words are life-giving. Jesus who is strong, Jesus who is God, makes his home in us. Jared Wilson writes, “If it were not for Jesus Christ, everything about us would blow apart in the gale-force hurricane of our own sin and frailty” (The Imperfect Disciple, 202).
As we trace the sand in calm waters or trudge along a rocky shore, he walks with us. He guides us. And in his commitment to stick with us, we then begin to reflect him and his goodness. We falter and fail. Our legs may buckle. We regress. Yet, as far as the east is from the west, that’s how far God has removed our transgressions (Ps. 103:12), and this truth gives us legs to climb back out and walk again.
Strength in Tomorrow
A huge difference exists between God’s children and hermit crabs. For one, as hermit crabs grow, they must select a larger shell. Colonies of hermit crabs compete to find their upgraded abode, and when vacant seashells are sparse, they resort to arm-wrestling to secure a new home.
But for Christians, we know that once Christ makes his home in us, we are secured as his. Though we are weak, our treasure in Christ shows “the surpassing power belongs to God and not us” (2 Cor. 4:7). On this earth we face conflict and imminent aging, but we who are in Christ can confidently say, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). To boast in weakness channels our boasting in Christ.
We can also boast that God created us in his image, which “renders us utterly unlike any other creature in the universe. We build, we create art, we love, we work” (Dane Ortlund, Deeper, 39). We have the distinct capacity to know and worship God.
Tim Challies writes, “We were made in the image of God to have a real and living relationship with God” (Knowing and Enjoying God, 9). Our loving Father delights in us. He hears our prayers. He unites us with him in Christ. God’s love is so vast that it “surpasses knowledge,” and we are included in all this to be “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17–18).
God is love, and the gospel means Jesus is more than a covering of protection. He’s also a friend. We seek after him and venture to know and enjoy him more each day. As we’re honest about our weakness, we find him steadfast and compassionate, the gentle and good shepherd, as shown in Scripture. The solid safety of the gospel combined with the truth of who Jesus is gives us firm footing. Nothing can separate us from his faithfulness and his love.
There’s an old hymn in which the author likens the phenomenon of the deep, deep love of Jesus to the depths of the ocean. The recipients of this love? Those who admit they are weak. Like hermit crabs, we, too, know a strong covering outshines the myth of self-sufficiency. In Christ, we have strength to stand though our merit falls short. In Christ we have a Savior who resides both in and with us, and because of Christ we know God’s love.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of Thy love
From hymn by Samuel Trevor Francis, 1875.
Hermit crabs know there’s wisdom in admitting weakness. Do we? And to whom do we cling?
Timarie Friesen and her husband, Mark, attend and serve at Hope Church in Dubuque, Iowa. Timarie enjoys reading fiction with her three children, and on her website she writes short stories that reflect the good news of Jesus. As the GCD Writers’ Guild Director, her hope is for writers to grow in the craft of writing and to know and love God more. You can follow her on Twitter.