On Titanics and Fishing Boats

When you find out that you're no fishing boat, but rather, the Titanic sailing full steam ahead into bergs of brash pride, you better have some decent friends around.  You better call out for help so they can come and haul you out of the freezing waters and the breath sucking cold.  You better reach for hands that are willing to pull you into their own life boats.  Willing to risk capsizing their own souls.  Willing to give you mouth to mouth and wrap you up in blankets of pure love even though they know it as well as you that you've been the fool.

And when you sit in their love, wrapped up in grace, and floating on wood?  When you look back to see your ship split clean and sinking fast?  When you can't help but wish...somewhere deep...that you were going down with it?  Hold fast the hands of love.  There is nothing warm in an ocean grave full of you and your grave choices.

Sit and be still.  Sit quiet.  Take it all in....

You were running hard and fast.  Unsinkable. You thought you were okay, and that it would be alright, but as soon as the iceberg ripped you open, you saw everything suddenly clear.  All that jagged ice beneath the water is what got you in the end, and you were just foolish enough to think the little piece on the topside was all you were dealing with.

Titanic mistake.

As soon as you were cut, you knew.  Felt it down in your bones.  You knew that the old things weren't  healed and that it didn't take much at all to tear you straight through and plunge you headlong down into dark waters.

Take it all in.  The ship split clean in half and sinking fast.  You might be sleeping in an ocean grave tonight too, if it hadn't been for love and for wood and for friends with strong hands and hearts pulling you into their lives.

You curl fetal at the bottom of her boat while she rows you to the safety of shore.  She speaks in low, gentle tones, and the rhythm of the oars splashing and lifting lulls you to sleep.  She does it all.  You have no strength for the work.  No words to explain that you understand now about icebergs.  Nothing to ease the pain that soaks your very soul, and the question that haunts your mind.

How will you ever be well?  How will you ever be whole?

Love listens, and you listen hard for Him.

He has taken the Titanic away, and placed you at the bottom of a tiny fishing boat made of wood.  He has given a net which must daily be cast out into the open sea.  Your net worth.  Your worries.  He has taken your icebergs,  and He has given the cross.  He has called you His child and He has said, "Peace.  Be still."  He has given you your story and His blood, and in these two things, the gouges cut into your life are bound up once again.  They are bound up in His grace and His mercy.  They are bound up by His love, and He is the best of all friends.

He stands in your humble vessel, and you can see His hair tousled in the breeze as He watches the water swallow the sun.  He turns in the shadows that remain.  

"And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death."  

He looks at you hard, and you know.  Jonah-girl, you know.

Overcome the enemy of my soul?   By the blood of the Lamb.  By the word of my testimony.  "For they loved not their lives even unto death."


Bernadette


Revelation 12:9-11

	And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world--he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.