The Lost Sea Lion

The challenge of recognizing our sin comes in the fact that we normalize it. It becomes a habit. In his book The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge tells a parable of a sea lion who had lost the sea and lived in a desert where it was dry and dusty. But something inside him longed for what he’d been made for: “How the sea lion came to the barren lands, no one could remember. It all seemed so very long ago. So long, in fact, it appeared as though he had always been there. Not that he belonged in such an arid place. How could that be? He was, after all, a sea lion, But as you know, once you have lived so long in a certain spot, no matter how odd, you come to think of it as home” (John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of, expanded ed. [Nashville: Nelson, 2016], xiii).