My last week of blog silence was due to a week of scuba diving in the Cuban archipelago. The specific location was Santa Lucia on the north east coast of Cuba just south of the Bahamas and other famous dive destinations such as the Turks and Caicos Islands. My good friend Rob and I shared in some exquisite wall dives replete with purple, red, orange and green sponges, and myriads of different corals such as brain, elkhorn, lettuce and fire corals.

We were also strangely received by hundreds of deadly lionfish that proliferated after being released from an aquarium in Florida! Unsettling as these fish belong in the South Pacific and not in the Caribbean and have a bad record of killing unsuspecting fish as well as injuring unfocused divers! They are gorgeous to see but dangerous and terribly painful to the touch.

We also stumbled across a sleeping nurse shark (6 feet in size) nestled under a rock shelf catching a few winks during the daylight hours before its night hunting prowels. He didn’t really appreciate our curious peers and excited “gaahs” seeping through our regulators and took off rather abruptly. A short but still satisfying encounter…from a diver’s perspective.

All in all I was reminded once again of the Psalmist’s refrain, “Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it” (Ps. 98:4). The underwater world quite naturally gives praise to God. Simply by existing…the fish, coral, sponges, sharks all give praise to their Creator. It is us two legged humans that are so slow to praise!

We either need to spend a lot more time under water to learn how to praise or pay closer attention to Abba’s presence on the surface. Cuba can’t always come to our aid! Perhaps we landlubbers can slow our pace a bit and join with our water friends in ‘making a joyful noise to the Lord’?