The problem with a steel boat is that the crisis curve starts out gradually and quickly becomes exponential.  The more trouble she’s in, the more trouble she’s likely to get in, and the less capable she is of getting out of it, which is an acceleration of catastrophe that is almost impossible to reverse.  With the boat’s bilge partially flooded, she sits lower in the water and takes more and more prolonged rolls.  Longer rolls means less steerage; lower buoyancy means more damage.  If there’s enough damage, flooding may overwhelm the pumps and short out the engine or gag its air intakes.  With the engine gone, the boat has no steerageway at all and turns broadside to the seas.  Broadsides exposes her to the full force of the breaking waves, and eventually a part of her deck or wheelhouse lets go.  After that, downflooding starts to occur.

–The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger

This week I have been thinking about urgency.  The motive power to accomplish things based on a sense of impending doom (or possibly of impending delight; but more often doom) is one that is altogether too familiar for me.  What I would do if I were ever faced with the actual doom itself is a realization at which I have neither arrived nor ever care to, since there is enough latent guilt in my psyche to fuel any amount of speculation about why I should richly deserve such a fate: however, the very thought has usually been sufficient to ensure some measure of temporary good behavior.  The picture of urgency we received this week, however, has little to do with such needless emotional gymnastics.

We saw a sketch of the Christian life that was at once unnerving and reassuring.  On the one hand it confirmed that the things God has given us to enjoy in this life (marriage, singleness, wealth, poverty, work, rest) are not as stable as we think they are and that they can be taken away without damaging our wellbeing or our identity.  On the other hand it reminded us that God delights to give these things, not merely for the joy of giving them, but so that we can use them for his glory and each other’s good.  And if all this is true, then the things we enjoy are good insofar as an intrinsic value can go, but they are also capable of being used for great evil.

The journey on which I embarked in thinking this through was very similar to the experience of listening to Frederic Chopin’s Etude for piano, Opus 25 Number 12.  The call to examine the source of my perceived status lured me in with a restless, tossing lilt of music that brought to mind the inviting aloofness of the waves on the seashore.  This was a siren call from beauty that was mine for the pursuing, but which would not seek me out if I chose to ignore it.  It would go on rolling and cascading and flinging itself on the beach in all its winsome glory forever, to my loss.  Though our salvation is chosen for us, our progress in sanctification is not.  We can elect to squeak through life with as Gospel-less a perspective as possible, only to find at the end of all things that we were saved as through the fire, having wasted our lives on self and status.  The message that we are eternally significant because we are made in the image of God, and so that we will find validation of that significance only through the framework God gives us in which we are to think and talk and work and live and die, is the prize that is offered to Christian maturity.  It is the reason we beat our bodies and make them our slaves, so that we might run in such a way as to obtain that prize.  It is pointless to speak of disqualification as the apostle does, if indeed our willingness to be involved is inconsequential.

Once we have fearfully set foot in the lapping wavelets of the sea, the score shifts.  Out of its initial sense of abandon and frolic the music settles into a refrain of mortal seriousness.  The waves come now with purpose and vigor, stridently setting a pace of unabashed accomplishment.  No sooner have I agreed to let the Word evaluate my life than it hands me a list of things I am supposed to be holding loosely enough that I will not be knocked off my feet when they are taken away, but closely enough that I can truly enjoy them.  Following Jesus would not be such a daunting prospect if he were not so intently going somewhere!  How much more pleasant it would be to dawdle on the beach and make sand castles, and pretend there is really nothing else I am supposed to be doing at the moment.  But he is going somewhere, and unfortunately it appears that is straight into the depths of the ocean.  I sorrowfully look down at all the blessings that are in my hands, suddenly recall a warning about turning back once I’ve set my hand to the plow, and slowly loosen my grip.

Here is where things get dicey.  All is well until I reach about 5 ½ feet of depth.  At that point the music turns menacing, slows down and hits the lower registers.  I can no longer move under my own power at this point.  The unforgiving waves move up and over my head as though nothing were there at all, and the music swells into the desperate largo of a final cry for help.  I have reached the end of what I can do, and my idolatry and love of control and fear of loss have taken over my desire to use the things in my life as leverage for the good of the Kingdom.  Only a muffled prayer, the prayer of Jonah, reaches the holy temple of the Lord even as my life is fainting away.  Surely it is over now.

And then a joyous, crashing burst of sound breaks in on my despair.  I am plucked out of the water with a reassuring force that reminds me who is Master of the wind and waves.  My heart is so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, and my eyes so full of tears that I barely even hear the gentle rebuke “You of little faith – why did you doubt?”  All I know is that my God is greater.  New strength is given me to persevere, new faith is given me to continue even when I do not see the purpose of what I have been given to do, and a mighty hope rises up within me that things are going to be all right.

The pounding staccato of the waves is mounting up all around me now in a frenzy.  My boat is flung to staggering heights of Christian love and duty, rending apart sail and board and beam in the irreversible acceleration of catastrophe that strikes fear into the heart of the most seasoned mariner, and yet I am secure.  I know that though the decision to bow in obedience to Christ in these areas of my life was my own, yet the power to continue in that obedience did not come from me.  I am afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in my body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in my body.  It is evident that my strength is slowly being drained and my life poured out like a drink offering, my body wearing down and my soul yearning for a world where there is no more pain or sorrow, my hull downflooding and my craft broadside to the seas; yet at the end of all things when the welcome waters of the Jordan close over me for the last time, I will scorn to change my state with kings.

For we will at last look back on how our lives were spent and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these light and momentary afflictions were preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.  When that prize is given us for which we labored so long, it will be second nature (first nature?) then to hold it with an open hand, accepting the commendation of our Lord and answering “Yet not I, but Christ in me.”  And so the melody is resolved into a phrase of such purity and sweetness, as our boast in the cross of Christ Jesus is lifted up on high for all eternity, by which the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world.

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV