Lessons from a Three Hour Cruise:

Lately, I find myself identifying with Gilligan. 

If you remember, he, the Skipper, and the passengers leftfor a "Three hour tour."  That's about how long my wife, some friends, and I were out on the water last Friday.  Near our home is a lovely little lake; we enjoy taking guests out and showing them around--people are always impressed with this jewel--and then sharing a picnic out on the water.  It was a lovely blue-sky and calm-water evening. 

But as you know from the song, "The weather started getting rough.  The tiny ship was tossed."  After just drifting, eating, and talking for well over an hour, we headed back toward the dock and ramp, where we would put Visitationback on her trailer.  I was having such a good time that I decided to linger for a few minutes, a few hundred yards out in the lake.  Kathy noticed the sky darkening.  By the time we got to the no wake zone, we were, indeed, being tossed.  There was no "fearless crew."  We were scared.

People have asked if I had ever seen anything like the storm that came straight out of the West.  The is answer is, "No! I have never seen anything that even approached what took place.  We were able to get three of us out of the boat.  My friend was in the boat holding a rope and I was on the dock trying to hold it and keep it from beating itself to pieces on the steel and concrete.  That soon proved futile, and in a matter of seconds the boat looked like countless pictures I had seen of the aftermath of hurricanes.  It was sideways on the shore, sitting at an angle that made it look sure that it was going to sink.  My friend and I acted kind of like shock absorbers keeping the waves--which also looked like they belonged on a ocean--from rocking it as violently as they would otherwise. 

The ladies found themselves sitting on the dock.  This one is kind of like a floating sidewalk.  soon it began to look like that bridge that collapsed a couple of decades ago, out west, or erhaps like the floor of the Tilt-a-whirl at the fair.  My friend saw that the structure was going to break in two so he went to help the ladies make it to shore.  They made it by crab-walking, a  picnic cooler in each hand.  All of this was accompanied by a drenching rain that was like standing in front of a fire hose. 

We found out later that we had been struck by a storm five-hundred miles wide, which advanced from around Chicago to the East Coast at seventy-miles an hour, the derechoaccelerated as it crossed the mountains.  As it blew across Lake Moomaw it had its pedal to the metal.  (See maphere.)

The storm calmed enough that we were able to get Visitation on the trailer.  We helped another family trailer their boat as well, and provided shelter in one of our vehicles for another couple of guys who found themselves with a boat one place and truck and trailer another.  For a while it looked like we would be, once more, like Gilligan--stranded.  Fallen trees blocked the road out, so we were stuck in a dark parking lot.  The bath house at the nearby beach had been locked-up earlier in the evening.

One more Gilligan comparison:  Skipper called him "Little Buddy."  I certainly felt little that evening.  I imagine our emotions were similar to those of the disciples in a boat, about the size of mine.  No wonder they thought they would perish (Mark 4:35-44).  I know I was reminded of my littleness. 

Stay tuned.  With cable out, it's the only channel many of us have.

It's STTA

  

http://covingtonbiblechurch.com/lifesmostimportant.html