Adrift

I have become unmoored. I am clearly not suited to survive in choppy, stormy, seas. My anchor points have failed me, and I am drifting now, undirected and undirectable, ever further from the shore. I lost sight of land days ago, and the sea shows no signs of calming.

I am Peter, called at my request from the safety of my friends—friends I can only glimpse occasionally through the wind-blown waves. He and I are together sinking helplessly, hands thrown skyward, screaming, pleading (him, audibly; me, an inside-my-head whisper only I can hear) for someone to save us.

I am David, chasing around the countryside in desperate flight from one who wishes him dead. He and I have no place of refuge, only caves and secret hills, and now my caves and secret hills are being leveled and I will be exposed for all to see. And He and I together sing this lament: How long will you forget, oh Lord?

I am Jacob, the deceiver, fleeing Esau and all of those I have wronged by my deceptions. He and I have wrestled God and lost, and by losing won, though I do not feel like a winner anymore. He and I together have seen the ladder to the sky and dreamed our dreams, and had our plans undone by circumstances we could not control.

I am Nicodemus, the proud man who, nevertheless, still has a seeking soul. He and I together have crept in the darkness to meet the Scandal who could undo us, and in the undoing somehow remake us into something entirely new. We have questions. So many questions. But every question and every answer pulls at the anchor points we’ve relied upon for so long.

My work. My entertainments. My social connections. My paint-by-numbers religiosity. My comfort food and comfort drink. My false and undemanding intimacies. My predictable and comfortable (but not lavish) life is no longer predictable, and in its unpredictability it has lost its power of comfort.

I am unmoored. I am anxious. I am drifting at the same time I am drowning. I am learning the emptiness and powerlessness of these false gods I had set up in place of the Living God. I need a new anchor point. Only one.

Again, I am Peter, and we are together crying out, “Oh, Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30). And the Anchor of the universe reaches down, all the way down, into my heart and calms my storms. And then I have a new prayer. Oh, Lord, may you be forever the only anchor of my life. Amen.