I live by the ocean now.  Something that I recommend for everybody to take up residence next to for some portion of your life, even if short.  Although I am not close enough to hear the waves, I feel blessed the shoreline is always within walking distance.  Where I live now, in Figueira da Foz, Portugal the ocean shore has actually receded almost a half mile away from the city over the decades so to reach where the waves crash you have to embark what seems like an obnoxiously long trek on the beach.  The reason the beach has receded away from the city is a little hard for me to understand, but I believe it has something to do with the breaker installed by man on the mouth of the Mondego river in an effort to tame the waves for the benefit of ship ingress and egress.

This occurs to me as a somewhat tragic, but beautiful example of divine justice for man insisting himself upon the world instead of living in harmony with it.  I accept His sentence to us who live in this beautiful place perfectly just and consider the matter appropriately handled in God's court.  I do not insist on what I presume is the position of environmentalists who may presume representing what they believe to be the Creator's position on the case.  I'm pretty sure He doesn't need any more sycophants.

As one gazes at the ocean, I can't help but attempt to visualize how many thousands of miles it goes on before it reaches the east coast of my homeland in the United States.  Its truly hard to fathom, especially if you estimate the distance to the horizon you can see and then check your math against your imagination.  It makes you humble in a way that seems cosmically compatible with the underlying nature of our existence.    

A few miles north on the shore towards Buarcos, the ocean returns to being in close proximity to the city.  Buarcos is still within walking distance for my wife and I, though we usually only pass it on bicycle, and we do this quite often because it leads to roads along the coast that are even more beautiful than anything the city offers.  While I hold a little bit of envy in my heart,  there is a mural painted along the sidewalk reading "Save the ocean" that provokes in me an internal harumpf and eye roll every time I pass it.   To me, it beckons an inflated sense of significance for ourselves on this almost incomprehensibly vast ocean.  I'm not sure if the messaging is intended for city residents regarding the receding shoreline here in Figuiera da Foz, intended to represent the ocean in general, or if its just pandering to the general pro-Earth, anti-Creation messaging of the modern environmentalist fashion virtue signaling thats trending globally.  In any of the above interpretations, it just comes off as absurd sentiment to me.  

I wish the artist would have used the wall space for a nobler purpose for fellow man, such as "Save the souls".  At the very least, it should have been written in Portuguese, a courtesy paid even by local graffiti artists.  I fully expect a majority of people find this weakly-held sentiment I have for it the disgusting one.   I'm more than okay with that because I worship God, not his creations, and am confident this is the correct orientation of my adoration of Him despite how the world insists upon the superiority of its "modern morality".  I can even add my own entry into this competitive game of virtue signaling they play to highlight the absurdity.  I'm going to facetiously seek out wallspace to paint my own mural with hashtag "Save the Milky Way".

I hope you see how this above little story has spiritual elements that rhyme with scripture.  If you read this, you have just been propagandized with a timeless morality that trumps anything modern and I encourage you to read the Bible and find Jesus' life story and teachings echoing in literally everything and everyone's life experience on Earth.