Shipwrecked

I had so much time to breathe and relax while I was on vacation visiting Christina. We have a friendship that grew out of vulnerability - from the beginning, we've trusted each other with our whole selves, the silly, the juvenile, the sad, the ugly, the serious. It's given us a sincere ease with each other. We don't feel pressured or judged, we don't feel like we have to impress or pretend. We just are.

So I read 5 books while I was traveling, some on the plane, but a lot laying on her couch while she edited photos (she is so talented and constantly amazes me! She owns her own business and is a year younger than me! Oh and she's going to be a substitute math teacher this fall). Mostly novels, but I did read one theological gem, Shipwrecked by Jonathan Martin.

Shipwrecked is all about what happens when life doesn't go as planned, and although the author says he brought his shipwreck about himself, most of what he writes is applicable to storms that come about on their own.

This book reminds me a little of Coming Clean by Seth Haines, in which he chronicles his journey to sobriety, and how he has to sink his own ship day after day to recognize his dependence on God. Whether you're sinking your own ship, or have it turned out from under you, the end result is the same: when Jesus is all you have, you may find that Jesus is all you need.

I'm just going to share some quotes.

Almost nobody who survives a shipwreck would ever sign up to do it all over again, a second time. Nobody can exactly say they were glad it happened. And yet repeatedly, I hear people say the same thing - that they also under no circumstances would choose to go back and be the person they were before. 

In you is the capacity to love and to live without needing the world to work out a certain way in order for you to be okay. 

If death is not the final word, and chaos produces creation rather than destroys it, then many of the stories of the life you thought were long over are far from over yet. 

If there is no other evidence in your life that God loves you, is there for you, or provides for you, consider the evidence of your own breath - each inhale and each exhale carrying with it the message that God is choosing you all over again, now, in this moment - in this breath. 

Returning to our breath is a way of returning to reality. 

When we breathe, slowly, intentionally, mindful of the source of life that fills our lungs now - we return to who we really are. 

God is at home in the chaos - it is the place from which he started the universe. 

God is not the cosmic enforcer of karma, making sure we get what we deserve. God is the one who interrupts the cycle with grace.

Christian hope is ultimately not that the sea can be survived but that the sea will one day be eliminated - in the time when time as we know it is no more. 

The world that is coming will not be marked by ambiguity, angst, and chaos. Instead, the Spirit who brooded over the waters from the beginning brings the creation project to its final end - where the seeds of the dark void finally give way to endless flowers. 

Death, in the end, is not an ally God cooperates with to bring about his good purposes for the world, but an enemy he will overthrow. 

I believe God has exactly one plan - and it is to bring the reign of heaven into the depths of the earth, eliminating the sea of our shipwrecks once and for all.