I recently completed a week’s sailing training course. I spent a week living aboard a yacht with four other students and one instructor, learning the basics of sailing and navigation. One of the exercises that we had to do was to navigate by night. We started as the sun fell (essential for night sailing, apparently), and picked our way out of Port Solent marina in Gosport and towards the Solent, through the busy Portsmouth Harbour.
In the dark, sight was clearly of limited value. The only way to make safe passage was to study the charts and carefully follow all of the flashing navigation lights on the buoys that marked out the safe course to steer. Stay inside the marked channel and we were safe: deviate from the course and we were at risk of running aground (or colliding with one of the various warships dotted around Portsmouth harbour).
It wasn’t a time for subjective feelings
“Well the chart says that we should keep that flashing red light on our starboard, but I just have a feeling that we’ll be OK if we point across towards that green one over there’.
Or for personal opinions:
“Charts! They’re so legalistic: just trying to limit our creative sailing experience. It’ll be much more fun to just go where we want to”.
Absolutely. Who wants be legalistic when the fun of a creative shipwreck is the alternative? Who wants to obey a boring old chart when we could just follow our hunches into the mud?
As I reflected on the experience afterwards, it struck me that night-sailing is a bit of a metaphor for living as a Christian. It’s often hard to make decisions and work out what the right thing to do is. How to live my life presents even bigger challenges than night sailing. Where is the safe and proven course towards, being a good person? Managing my wealth? Developing healthy relationships? Handling my sexuality? Planning my career? Getting even with my enemies?
And so on.
Lots of possibilities for running aground.
Lots of need to find the safe deep water.
Fortunately God has marked a channel for us. The master Map-Maker knows the ocean well enough to guide us through the shallows, away from the mud banks and into the deeps of a life well-lived. Our job is to to trust the Person who positioned the channel markers and obediently follow the course they mark.
Trust and obey. The shape of a Christian life. Simples.
Jesus (no stranger to sailing in the dark) put it like this: “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31,32.
Or perhaps, in the new (as yet unpublished) DL version of the Bible:
“Real disciples choose to stay within the channel markers I’ve set up. And you will find the deep water, and the deep water will be your safe channel through life”.
Of course the option is there to resort to our personal opinions or subjective feelings.
But that way lies shipwreck.