“A Boat or an Ark”
When I was young, my brothers and I loved boats. We liked riding in them, looking at them and fishing from them. Of course we couldn’t afford one, so we built some. We made one out of an old suitcase, put it in the 4’ fish pond and it sunk. Than we made one out of 1×4 pine flooring, put it in Gunnerson creek and it sunk. We helped our Daddy some, building a houseboat, and it sunk.
I hear all the time, that in our nation, and the world, we are all in the same boat together. A friend told a story once. There were two men in a boat, one in the front and one in the back. The man in the front took out an brace and bit drill and started drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat. The man in the back said,”What are you doing? The man in the front said,” I am drilling a hole in my end of the boat. The man in the back said, “ But what you are doing will affect the both of us”. I watched a football game the other day where one team had the game in the bag until two of their players each got a 15 yard penalty, with 45 seconds on the clock. That put the other team within field goal range and the game was over. No Super Bowl chance. I know there are many circumstances in life where someone or something sunk our boat The world tells us that we all live in the same boat and that’s just the way it is.
About thirty years ago at the worst time in my life, I met a man that was a commercial fisherman. He had a 47 foot boat, 2 twenty foot boats and a 16 foot boat with an outboard motor on it. The net was 12 feet deep and 1,500 yards long. Yep almost 1 mile long haul seine net. Haul meaning, you pull the net in by hand. I was going to work on 4 boats, not just my one boat that was half full of water and seemed to be sinking all the time.
One day in a conversation, the captain just happened to mention, that he was running from God. Well I’ll tell you that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but I was about to find out.! I was an unhappy hippie trying to have fun in life, and was getting ready to find out what being in the same boat with a man and a brace bit drill was all about, and whether the world’s view of us all being in the same boat was true or not.
While under the influence once, I questioned him about what he had meant by he was running from God, and this is what he told me. “ I met God one time and it scared me.” He had left his wife and children and took up with another woman and I was living on the same boat with him and his drill bit.
A few examples of drillings: One day we hooked up all the boats one tied behind the each other with the 1 mile net folded on the stern of the big boat. Beautiful day,blue sky, silky water, you just wanted to breath in the scene. We went all the way down to the Gulf at about 8 knots, very slow with all that weight. We set the net anchor on the beach. The big boat left, paying out the net. It was soon nearly out of sight. Then he started to turn, sweeping around in a large circle back towards me at the net anchor, corraling all those fish.in a big square pocket made with netting. Then it began. The sky turned black on the horizon in the southwest. We decided we had better get the hell out of there, because if there was such a thing as hell it was coming. We got the net in one of the 20 foot boats, linking all the boats one behind each other, and started back up the bay towards home. At a speed of about 8 knots there was no way to outrun the storm. To save our own lives, we cut the other three boats loose and headed on towards home. At 12 knots sinking was nipping at our stern. The next day we went out and found the boats were all sunk and the net was everywhere. We bailed the boats out and started hauling in the net. We folded the net in the bottom of the boat, of course it was full of pogy, a small shiny fish that went through a heat, meaning rotting in a few hours. If you haven’t waded in two feet of stinking, rotting,bloody pogy fish water, you haven’t lived yet. At that time I began to think this boat has a curse on it.
Another example: We had set the net another time up in the bay, because we were a little shy of the Gulf after the last episode. We were driving some poles in the bottom, when the sky turned black. We both stopped and looked at each other. His hair was standing straight up on his head ! and mine was too. Of course mine was higher since I was a hippie you know. About that time a bolt of lightning hit the water about 10 feet from me, boiling the water up. It was about waist deep, I could not believe I was not dead. I thought my boat had sunk forever.
One last episode of many: When exhausted of sinking boats and hell at our heels, the captain said he was going back to his wife in Virginia and wanted me to go with him. I agreed reluctantly, thinking my boat could sink forever in a boat with a curse on it. Of course, sailing in the only boat we had left, we made a little better speed. Well it was a 18 day trip from Mobile, Al. down around Florida and up to the Chesapeake Bay and I could fill a book with the near death sinkings we had, But I’ll tell just one more incident. We docked in Apalachicola Florida. I was hoping to rest up a day or two, but the captain wanted to hurry up and leave. Well there were storm warnings up, 17 foot seas and this cursed boat was getting ready to leave out into it. I looked at the captain as sternly as I could and said,” I am not going ”. Well I let him talk me into it, we had not gotten out of the harbor when we wound a crab trap in the prop. Dead in the water. It’s a good thing we were close to the sea wall and we could pull the boat back to the dock.
When we finally arrived at the captain’s wife’s house on the Chickahominy River in Virginia, we put the anchor out and the next morning the boat was gone, The anchor had pulled loose and the boat was leaning on its side in the cypress stumps.
That night while eating around the table, another old fisherman said these words to me. “David, you’ve made a mess out of your life, why don’t you let Jesus fix it.” All my life I had tried to fix my boat so to say, so it would float and had no idea that He would do it for me. I was always told, if you clean up your act, stop drinking, dress nicer, stop smoking, and go to church, then, God would be pleased with you. I didn’t know that I could never fix me ( my boat ). That’s the Master Builder’s job. These were my words, “ God if you are real, I need help ”. He had been waiting for me to say this. No more sinking boats and no more wading around in the bloody Pogy fish water of life. I had no idea, that board by board and boat by boat. God was building an Ark for me. In my rebellious state my boat was never going to float. When Noah built the Ark, God himself taught him how to build it to save mankind, a boat that could never sink.
We are told that we all live in the same boat. Not so. Our lives are like an Ark under construction and at a certain time in life it’s complete and we move in.
I can recognize a sinking boat when I see one. We try to patch the boat the best we can, but God is the only one that can make it float and keep it from sinking.
By the way, our nation has similarly been like an Ark for many, many years for the world’s sinking boat people. It’s just been beaten up and gotten off course in the black storm of liberalism. It will not sink because it was not built with human hands. It was built by the Master Boat carpenter. Jesus.
Men are captains of sinking boats.
God is captain of the Ark.
