Spouting Horn Beach Park, near Poipu, Kauai, lives up to its name. The giant blowhole can, depending on the tide and surf conditions, shoot a ferocious spout of water as much as fifty feet into the air.
Visitors can view this impressive natural ocean attraction from the top of a hill. There are guardrails and warning signs offering protection to keep tourists from wandering too close to the perilous spouting water and the subsequent mighty surge of the dangerous maelstrom as it swirls back through the hole into the ocean below.
When I was there, however, the Enter at Your Own Risk signs were nothing more than a green light to me—a welcome mat, if you will. Honestly, I don’t even know why they put up offers of advice like that when I’m in the neighborhood. It’s like a dare. I don’t walk around looking for an adventure like that, but if it’s put right in front of me, what am I supposed to do?
At that particular time of day, the tide was low, and the ocean level was way below the lava shelf’s rim. So down the hill my friend Tricia Walker and I trotted. I was sporting the cool flip-flops I’d bought four hours earlier and an equally fashionable gardener’s straw hat.
No waves were flowing over the top of the shelf to wash us down the blowhole, and I knew I could back up far enough from the geyser when it blew to miss the churning, foaming maelstrom of water as it receded down the hole.
Tricia and I stood between the blowhole and the ocean, exploring the sharp, serrated, ancient lava formations, when I glanced up and saw fellow tourists waving at us from atop the hill. I thought it a kind gesture from folks I didn’t know. So I did a bodybuilder pose, suspecting they were taking pictures of us, when I noticed some of them stop waving and begin pointing behind us.
I turned just in time to see a massive wave, much taller than the lava shelf, bearing down a mere handful of seconds from us. It must have been a freak minitsunami from some earthquake off the coast of Tasmania.
I screamed for Tricia to hold on to something. I lay back on the lava floor, planted my feet as firmly as I could against a small incline in the shelf, slammed my eyes shut, took in a deep breath, and waited.
The wave hit full force. Water gushed up the blowhole no more than fifteen feet from me. I found myself being shoved forward by the torrent of salt water pummeling against my back. Quickly, it all subsided. At that instant, I heard something ominous: rushing, groaning sounds and a sudden, violent gurgling—the ocean coursing its way back down the blowhole. I found myself being pulled along with it. I felt my feet come off the ground, out of my flip-flops. I dug in as hard as I could.
I have a distinct memory of some bouncy, horrified shrieking going on. I have decided to remember it as concerned sightseers atop the hill.
When the water finally subsided enough for me to know I wasn’t going down the blowhole with it, I realized I was less than a foot from the hole, pretty much straddling it, watching my brand-new gardener’s hat whirlpool out of sight. Tricia must have noticed my immediate sense of loss, as she attempted to grab it. I yelled, “Leave it!”
I never knew what happened to my flip-flops, but I have my suspicions. All I know is that my feet were cut to shreds by the dried, razor-sharp lava, and for the rest of my stay on that beautiful island, those feet were severely sensitive.
I’ve been told the blowhole is actually a sort of safety valve, much like the old steam engines that open if the equipment gets too hot or pressurized. This safety valve keeps the equipment from exploding and damaging the machines or causing injury to nearby people.
If the blowhole were not there to release energy, the constant pounding of ocean water underneath the dried lava would slowly disintegrate the shelf, causing it to break apart and fall into the boiling ocean below. So the safety valve itself became the attraction.
I sometimes experience that same beautiful, familiar feeling. It has become almost a motor response when I experience something that draws me closer to what I honestly believe heaven will be.
When my body becomes responsive to an encounter with Jesus, that can be experienced only because I know his Holy Spirit resides in my heart.
The closest earthly comparison might be sitting in the front car of a roller coaster—my favorite position—as it reaches the pinnacle of its slow, rhythmic, clickity-clacking climb.
The car slowly crests the hill. My adrenaline begins to pulse the moment just before I hear the release of the brake, and the car starts its insane plunge back to earth. I look down at the curved track far below. I inhale again—and scream. The exhilaration and anticipation tighten in my chest and move up into my face.
I, through sheer determination, raise my hands off the safety bar into the air and take in the deepest breath I can manage, because I know there is not one single thing I can do to get out of whatever happens next. The only thing I can accept at that point is the thrill of the ride.
After 45.5 seconds of sheer terror, the car comes to a screeching, abrupt stop, and my eyes fill with tears as I beg my fellow travelers to get back in line for one more ride. Why do tears fall when I feel such euphoria and elation?
I call it “the catch”—that moment when my emotion is at its peak and can’t rise any further. I get the same feeling when listening to praise music. I fill entirely up with the maximum amount of joy, anticipation, and expectation my body can withstand, until I can’t hold any more. I begin to shed tears with the certainty of the hope I have in Jesus. Why do tears come when I’m experiencing the pure joy of being in the presence of Jesus?
Praising Jesus and worshipping him is the closest I believe I will come to experiencing heaven here in this earthly body. It makes me look forward to the time when I’ll not be restrained; my worship and praise will rise forever; and the lump in my throat, the catch, will no longer be a hindrance. My joy will mix unendingly with every voice and heart at the throne of King Jesus.
Praise is perfect for here on earth, but I long for more. I’ve finally figured out that tears are our safety valve, the catch. I’m convinced the Lord gave us this earthly escape valve because our bodies can’t contain the magnitude of eternity.
Paul pointed it out in 1 Corinthians 2:9 (MSG): “No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this. Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.”
I believe God created us to long for heaven and the release of our limited capacity to physically praise him the way we wish to. There have been times when I’ve stood in my living room with my hands raised, screaming praise songs, when my heart was about to explode with sheer joy. I didn’t want the thankfulness and love I felt for him at that moment to stop. The final expression of my worship was with tears. It was a small reflection of eternity.
The safety valve, the catch—we weren’t made to experience here what we will encounter there; our bodies can’t contain it, so he gave us tears.
A moving picture of this expression of the safety valve is in Luke 7:36–50 (MSG):
One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.” Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Oh? Tell me.” “Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.” “That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived, she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.” Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.” That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!” He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
The picture of the so-called sinful woman even being in Simon’s house is worth noting. She came ready, prepared to see Jesus. If supper was to be at 6:30, she was there at 6:15.
She brought the perfume with her. It was not a last-minute decision. She knew who Jesus was, so she must have previously heard him speak healing and love to the hurting and forgotten.
She probably followed him from a distance, fearing he would shun her, as everyone with any amount of dignity and integrity would have.
She was not stalking a stranger. She withstood the scornful “What are you doing here?” looks from the others at the table.
Because it was the tradition for the host of the party to have the guests’ feet washed and dried, she didn’t bring water or a towel. Instead, she must have thought she would finish the welcome by anointing his feet with oil. How surprised she might have been when she saw his road-weary feet covered with dust from his travels.
But her heart was too full to allow that to stop her expression of thankfulness. She knelt in front of the One, the only one who didn’t look down on her. In fact, Jesus was the only one who showed compassion. All she could do was respond with a full heart of gratefulness that her earthly body couldn’t possibly contain. Thankfulness that she would never be able to fully express in the manner she wanted.
She never spoke a word. Her love poured out in the only way it could humanly respond: tears. Her safety valve became the attraction.
She wasn’t weeping tears on Jesus’s feet to make it clear how sinful she was or how wretched a person she knew herself to be. She was holding as much eternity as her earthly body could contain—maybe more than anyone else in that room, except for Jesus.
He knew. He saw. He understood. I believe the owner of the alabaster box’s tears were from a heart filled with thankfulness, repentance, and newly realized acceptance. She could see a future filled with hope, maybe for the first time; forgiveness; and a sense of self.
No woman of her status would have dared to do what she did. Newly discovered self-worth flowed from a life filled with adventure in the kingdom of love.
I’m satisfied that on the day she met Jesus in heaven, he gave her two gifts of her tears. He opened a great ledger and pointed to a specific time in history when he recorded her tears on his behalf, when no one else chose to wash his feet. Second, he gave her a bottle, maybe made of alabaster, in which he’d saved every single one of her tears, her safety valve, shed for his glory. And she was able to express her pure, real heart with the realization that she was finally home.
With the fullness of all eternity in front of her, she would no longer need the safety valve of a Hawaiian blowhole. She would finally exclaim, like the bride in Song of Solomon, “My beloved is mine. And I am His.”
That’s far more thrilling than a roller coaster.
