Setting Sail - by Bobby Triplett

There is a lot that goes into the preparations for a voyage. Ledgers of supplies to be checked and double-checked, instruments and tools to be collected and implemented, skills to be learned and wisdom to be gained. And, of course, there must be a gathering of those brave companions who will choose to travel together into the deep blue expanse of the hopeful unknown.

But for all of our preparations and calculations, for all of our skills and trades and carefully dreamt expectations, we can too quickly forget that the waters on which we travel cannot be presumed to be neatly ordered or nicely navigated. No, for they themselves are a companion character, an untamed variable in this adventure we have chosen to embark upon, and I am learning to remember that the paths and routes that I originally charted may not be the same ways by which the unknown sea will allow me to journey. 

There are those who will allow this very idea—this wild, incalculable consort—to keep them landlocked to the shores of the familiar, even when the inhospitalities of their mother country threaten to break their spirit. Safety can become their god, and they will worship it the way that they have always done, for the sake of always doing, even when it has become unsafe to do so.  

But any colony worth its salt, any mariner worth his vessel, knows in the deepest and truest places of his heart that the call to the brighter shores might very well be by way of the darkest routes of the deepest waters.

There were many of us who set sail together. We filled our ships and secured our sails, we said our prayers and kissed goodbye our beloved homelands, leaving in search of a new way of living on the shore of a distant dream. Many set sail, and many did not; some turned back for home, while others detoured in search of different routes. Some have been lost at sea, and some have been called to other shores and other colonies altogether.

But despite the unexpected variables and dramas of the voyage... and despite the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t complete the passage… some of us made it across the sea. The journey was true, and life, as we once only whispered about in hopeful conspiracies, has indeed taken root on the soil of this new country, growing strong and evergreen and nourished by the faith we have in the One who called us.

I am sure this is not the last time our hearts will be drawn out across the deep waters to distant and unknown places beyond the scope of our sight. I am sure that the same beckoning to leave familiar shores will pull our comfortable hearts with convincing gravities all over again.

But if and when we hear the salt air calling us out, and if and when we choose to follow it, there is one good and constant truth that we who have sailed once before will cling to. For we know this: our departure and our arrival are not contingent upon our preparations, nor how mighty a ship we captain, nor how true our sails are. It matters not how strong the crew is or even how wisely our ledgers are managed, nor is it contingent upon the violent storms or the windless doldrums. Rather, we lash our hearts to Voice of the sea, for we know that it is He alone who can bring our sailors’ hearts to the shores his words promised.