Last week we had the opportunity of sailing from one harbour to the next in Northern New Zealand. It reminded me of the many happy times we had been sailing ourselves when younger, and when we would spend weeks at a time enjoying the experiences that came along.
It reminded me particularly of one valuable lesson we learned very quickly during those years. At first when we went a quiet bay for some rest and relaxation after a day of sailing, we would drop the anchor, and then go inside for a hot drink. Then if, after a while, we could see that we weren’t in quite the same place as we had been when the anchor went down we would realise that we had drifted, and were much further out in the bay. So we would lift the anchor, and go forwards again, and put out more rope this time, pulling back on it to make sure that it had a good grip in the mud on the bottom. We soon learned to make this check every time the anchor went down.
It’s a lot like that in life at times. There will be times when we think we have a good hold on things and then we find that the winds of life have picked us up and carried us where we don’t want to be. It is in times like this that as we stop and take stock of what is happening around us; we are to go forwards once more and drop our anchor into the hope that God gives us in His Word, the Bible.
It is no use merely dropping the anchor; it is not the anchor that does the holding, it is what the anchor is sitting on. If the bottom has a lot of weed on it, the anchor will just slide along the top of it allowing our boat to drift. It is only as we put out more rope and pull back on it making sure that there is a good grip on the bottom, going through the weeds into the mud beneath, that we can rest in staying in one place. The rope is like the rope of faith in our life… the longer it is, the better the grip. The more we trust God in our difficulties, the stronger our faith becomes, and the firmer grip we have in the storms of life.
Without hope in our life, everything seems pointless, and we tend to get depressed. So it is that without the hope of God’s salvation, we have nothing to look forwards to. God doesn’t intend His people to be swayed around in the storms, but we must do our part by digging deep into His Word for ourselves.