The Master of the Sea and the Captain of the Ship

“For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.” (Ps 135:5-6 AV)

 It is easy to lose sight of this truth.  We are surrounded by the policies and whims of those who are in leadership.  That is who the ‘gods’ are, by the way.  We watch the news.  We read the papers.  Everywhere we go we see how the gods influence and control our lives.  As the world turns and we approach the coming of our LORD, this encroachment will become more severe.  We are reading almost daily how people of faith are the targets all of kinds of gods in every nation on the planet.  It is the arrest of Jesus all over again.  The vast majority of the planet hates God and they will take it out on God’s people.  You can bank on it.  Even those these things are and are going to happen, this does not mean that God has lost control.  He is in total control.  The rebels of the world think they have liberty.  But it is only temporary.  God is in control and things are and will be exactly as He wants them.  It is the old proverbial tying of one’s own noose.  This is exactly what is happening today.  What seems like a world out of the control of God is actually a world that is tying its own noose.

Imagine you are a small child on a cruise ship.  All you know is what you can perceive in your small little world.  A storm comes up and the ship is heaving with the waves.  From your perspective, you are in great peril.  Luggage in the room begins to move about.  That soda you had on the table dumps to the floor.  The toys you have strewn about the floor are beginning to organize themselves in one great body that moves back and forth with the room.  Your parents are also frightened.  They begin to react to what they cannot control and take it out on you and your siblings.  This only adds to the already heightened sense of fear you are feeling.  A Boseman's mate is going from room to room and giving instructions.  He does not seem panicked.  He merely wants to assuage the anxiety everyone is feeling and give them simple safety instructions for the next few hours until the storm abates.  In your youth, you think this turmoil will be short-lived.  A few hours seems like a lifetime.  Why didn’t this end as soon and the mate left?  Didn’t he know how to stop it all?  So, there you and your family huddle on the end of the bed with life jackets at the ready in case there was an instruction from the PA system to don them.  Little do you know there is a seasoned captain at the wheelhouse who has sailed through many storms.  He knows the best way through these rough waters and the ship is totally responsive to his instructions.  This is not his first rodeo.  As the seas calm and you get back to life as it was, you were never aware of all the captain did to keep you and everyone else safe.  In your eyes, you were in great peril subject to the forces of nature that no one could control.  Death was a possibility.  But to the captain of the ship, he was never out of his element.  He was in total control all the time.

This is how we journey through life.  It may seem like God has taken His hand off the wheel.  But He has not.  He may let the ship drive as it has the nature to do so, but the final destination is His to determine.  He may allow the waves to crash a bit.  He may see the wisdom in the ups and downs of sailing through time.  He knows the end from the beginning and He is perfectly in control of it all.  Where the above illustration fails is the captain of the ship cannot control the seas and storms.  He merely reacts to it.  Whereas, our God controls the seas, the storm, and the ship all in one.  What we see as chaos, God sees as harmony.  It must be this way because God has a plan.  This plan includes what we perceive to be chaos and destruction.  Our perception is very limited.  God’s is eternal.  He knows what he is doing.  What we can do is play marbles as the floor pitches and heaves.  How fun would that be?  It would be hilarious!  We could sit on the floor and try to hit our sibling with a marshmallow as the floor goes side to side.  We could play a game of carrying water without spilling it.  We could take the ups and downs of life and learn to live with it by turning it into an opportunity of service and joy all the while trusting the captain of the ship with the wheel.  The choice is ours.