The Good Captain

A captain sails his ship on the sea. The wind fills the sails and the wood hull cuts through the glass of a turquoise sea. He consults his maps and charts his course. During the day, he positions his ship by the sun and at night he takes bearings from the stars.

But soon a storm is upon his vessel. The seas turn gray and the waves turn white. A strong wind blows him off course. Clouds cover the skies for days and weeks on end and he cannot get his bearings. He bravely sails on, the best he can, keeping his ship afloat until the hurricane blows past and the clouds dissipate.

One night, the stars shine again through a break in the clouds and he quickly takes a brief reading and runs to his map to plot his position. He finds he is miles off course. At his current heading he will be lost in open sea for months and probably perish there.

He takes immediate action, marking a new heading, adjusting the sails and plotting a course to reach the original destination. It will take longer to reach the port, and certainly more effort now that they must travel further to get back on course, but the ship and the captain sail onward toward home.

The captain corrects his navigation without guilt and does not condemn himself for being off course. It is a force of nature to be blown so hard and have all navigational markers obscured. He is a capable captain and he has kept his ship sound and whole in order to sail on when the storm finally passed.

If he were to turn the ship wrong in the waves, causing it to wallow and take on water, if he did not do everything in his power to keep his ship and crew safe, if he did not take his bearings at the first available opportunity and make corrections to his navigation, then he would be found guilty of negligence and derelict of his duty.

We all sail our little ships on the giant seas of life. And sooner or later, the storms will come. Sometimes it is a brief thunderstorm with loud noise and a quick deluge. But many times, it is a record breaking hurricane, hundreds of miles across, taking its sweet time to pass through our lives and, many times, blow us off course.

God expects us to keep our ship secure in the storms, to point safely into the waves with His word so that the waves do not hit us broadside and sink us. He asks us to keep the faith that the clouds will eventually give way to starry skies, and to correct our navigation when possible.

The Apostle Peter sailed along with Jesus, but when the storms of persecution and peer pressure blew him off course, he ran away, weeping bitterly, knowing he had betrayed his Lord. His ship floundered and began taking on water. But, even in these dark conditions, he held fast. His navigational correction came when he jumped out of his fishing boat into the water in order to be the first one to reach a resurrected Jesus on the shore. This new direction, this “on course” Peter, sailed on to preach a sermon where 3,000 people believed in Jesus.  And this same Peter went on to write one of the greatest statements of faith in the New Testament.

God is not surprised when we get blown off course and watches over our ship even when we are sailing in the wrong direction. And if we do find ourselves headed toward the abyss, we do not need to punish ourselves with scolding, rebuke and guilt because He is as near as our own breath to help us back on course. We only need to look to the heavens and get our bearings.

All the Lord desires for us is to sail safely home, so sail on.

• Matt. 26.75
• Mark 14.72
• John 21.7
• Acts 2.14-41
• 1 Peter 1.3-5

     Written by 

Jody Ward