April 17, 2010

leave the shore
photo by Lee Keefer

“Jesus constrained them to go!
One would think that if ever there was
the certain promise of success
in a mission, it was here.
Surely, here, if anywhere, a triumphant issue
might have been confidently predicted;
and yet here, more than anywhere,
there was seeming failure.
He sent them out in a voyage,
and they met such a storm
as they had never yet experienced.
Let me ponder this,
for it has been so with me, too.
I have sometimes felt myself
impelled to act by an influence
which seemed above me —
constrained to put to sea.
The belief that I was constrained
gave me confidence,
and I was sure of a calm voyage.
But the result was outward failure.
The calm became a storm;
the sea raged, the winds roared,
the ship tossed in the midst of the waves,
and my enterprise was wrecked
ere it could reach the land.
Was, then, my divine command a delusion?
Nay; nor yet was my mission a failure.
He did send me on that voyage,
but He did not send me for my purpose.
He had one end and I had another.
My end was the outward calm;
His was my meeting with the storm.
My end was to gain
the harbor of a material rest;
His was to teach me
there is a rest even on the open sea.”
- George Matheson