Skip to main content

Two Boats


The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. (II Peter 3:9-10)
There’s and old story about a guy trapped on a roof in a flood. Someone comes along in a rowboat, and the guy refuses to leave the roof, proclaiming, “God will rescue me!” As the water continues to rise, someone from the Cajun Navy offers him a ride, and the man says again, “God will rescue me!” Later, as the water is splashing onto the roof, someone in a helicopter offers help, and the man swallows, but insists, “God will rescue me.” The house collapses, the man perishes, and as he stands before God, he asks, “Why didn’t you rescue me?
And God says, “I sent a rowboat, a member of the Cajun Navy, and a helicopter. Why didn’t you listen?
I don’t really like this story, because it seems designed to ridicule faith, but it does illustrate what does happen in our lives. Often, God acts, and because He doesn’t act the way we expect, we miss it or maybe even reject it. Often, God doesn’t seem to act, and we think that either He doesn’t care, or that He isn’t able when the reality is that He is showing patience with us or with people we don’t think deserve said patience. 
God has been so, so patient with me as I blunder through life, vacillating between extreme over-confidence and cowardice with almost no warning, holding on to false gods that I love and hate and can’t seem to keep from placing on the throne of my life in His place. He is patient with others when we think He should strike them with lightning bolts. He is patient with the world, content to give each of us opportunities to turn to Him.
And sometimes, we judge Him for His patience, because we want to see justice done our way. That person, or those people, should suffer for what they’ve done! And we’re right, they should suffer. And because we want that suffering, we don’t recognize that we’re the member of the Cajun Navy set to give them a ride to safety, or we refuse. We’re right, they should suffer, but so should we, and so should our beloved friend or relative for whom we accuse God of punishing for some small sin or weakness, or taking him/her “too soon,” without giving him/her a chance.
God gives us every second of every day to repent. He gives us every breath and heartbeat to repent. But He does not give us forever.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more