For the Halibut

I am a halibut. I have known this for quite some time, and I’ve made my peace with it.

I grew up in Alaska, and some of my favorite memories are of my family out in Cook Inlet, slowly reeling halibut up out of that dark, cold water. For Texans, I suppose it might feel like trying to pull a Longhorn off the bottom of the ocean floor. Halibut are strange creatures. They start out like any other fish, but then it happens. One day, an eye begins to migrate across the skull to join the other one. Then, the fish tips onto its side and settles onto the sea floor, where it will spend most of its life looking up, and its entire world becomes whatever passes overhead.

Halibut simply aren’t as fun as otters, who float on their backs, play together, and laze around in the sunshine with their bellies up. I wonder if Sarah from Genesis was more of a halibut or an otter, but there’s not a lot of info to help answer the question. She is talked about far more than she speaks, and it might be tempting to hear all that quiet as a problem. Maybe we feel the urge to rescue Sarah from her biblical solitude; maybe we wish she were more visible and vocal, more like an otter, but Sarah’s silence isn’t necessarily bad. The quiet can be enjoyable, and besides, the world doesn’t seem to suffer from a shortage of noise. What’s hard is that I don’t know whether Sarah wanted to be something other than what she was.

I do know this: Genesis 21:1-7 is a delightful space where she is free to share her voice and her laugh. God met her where she was and fulfilled a promise, then she was left to fill in the details. Sarah says, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” With those words, we enter into her joy. And when she laughs, I find it refreshing to hear her acknowledge that God gave her so much happiness.

You might be tempted to think her laughter proves she’s more of an otter, but not so fast! Halibut are not entirely passive. When something sparks a halibut’s interest, it comes up fast. It’ll leave the sea floor if given a good enough reason, kind of like Sarah rising into the verses we read this past week. I don’t know if that makes her a halibut like me, but I know that staying low and watching things go by above isn’t all that terrible. It’s quiet. I am free to think and wonder about curious things. And when I decide I’d like to hear a friendly voice, I love that I have a community filled with folks who are happy to greet me when I make my way up to the surface.

What I take from Sarah’s story is that God hears us even when we think there is silence, and God knows our voices no matter the volume. God meets us right where we are and never demands the quiet ones become otters. We are loved as we are, and if you are a halibut like me, I think maybe we can look forward to God dropping in on the sea floor to make us laugh, too.

PS: I was going to end with a joke in honor of the “Dad Joke Competition,” but all of mine fell flat; I guess I floundered.