"When the Wind is in Your Face"
Look to God when you're tossed on life's storms.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Text: Acts 27:1-121
I read a story very recently of two 17-year-old girls, is in a delightful new book entitled: Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul. One of the girls was about to turn 18 in a few days, and she went to her friend Shelley's house for the afternoon.
The story goes that these two young girls were recounting all the things that would be exciting about turning 18. They listed them and they thought how wonderful it would be to reach this milestone. Shelley was a little envious of her friend, the visitor, that she was going to reach this great and glorious day before she did.
But, as she was a visitor, they went into the living room where Shelley's grandmother, a shriveled, grey-haired, little, old lady sat in the corner. She talked to these two girls about all the good things she was experiencing in life. She explained about how she loved food and family and friends. She went on and on, listing all the things that she enjoyed and appreciated in life. Then she turned to Shelley's friend and said: "Well, you must really be getting excited about the opportunity to vote."
Well, of all the things on an 18-year-old's mind, voting is likely not at the top of the list of priorities. The young girl looked rather quizzical and said: "Well, yes. I suppose so."
Then Shelley's grandmother said something interesting: "You know, you must never take the opportunity to vote for granted. Can I tell you a story about why I think so?"
She told the story of how she and her husband and six children had grown up in the Ukraine, during the Communist repression and were not able to vote. They barely could eat and have an education. The children, even at the ages of eight and 10, had to go out to work for the family to be able to live and to eat. And so they made a decision one day to go to a country they had heard was free; a country which for them was the promised land. That country was Canada.
And so they sold everything that they had in order to buy the favour of someone who could help them cross over to freedom. Over a period of five days, this woman and her husband, three little children, one of whom was a baby, and three older children who were 10, 11 and 12, or thereabouts, set out to find the promised land.
And so they finally came to the border and realized that they had to cross a mile-long strip. Under the cover of darkness they did exactly that. But as they crossed over they knew that there would be dangers facing them, for guards lined up along that border would shoot people trying to escape.
As the mother with her baby, her husband and the two other little ones, in one group and the three older children, in another group started to cross the border, all of a sudden the searchlight hit the woman and the baby she was carrying. Seeing this, the 10-year-old son, who was with the two other, slightly older children, realized that his mother's life was in danger. So he stood there waving his arms to get the attention of the guards, and the searchlight turned on this little boy of 10 years old.
The mother continued to run with the child and her husband and the two other little children until finally they crossed over the border into safety, into freedom, only to hear a gun fire. The shot found its mark and the little boy, the 10-year old, dropped to the ground. He had made it to freedom, but when his mother and father and the other children went over to him, they realized he was dead.
Telling this story to those two young girls, the grandmother said: "Now, you understand freedom, do you not, and how important it is, and how voting is important, and how these are important things in a free land that we must never take for granted."
You see, my friends, there are some people who have given life and limb and family and soul and money to live in freedom. There are people who have realized the great value of freedom and have sacrificed almost everything in order to get it.
There are many such stories, of people who have come to our land, people who have fled to other lands in order that they might live in freedom. For them tyranny is death, but freedom is life.
In the passage from the Book of Acts that we read this morning, the story of the voyage of the Apostle Paul, we read that he is a captive on a ship sailing to Rome. Paul, even though he was a prisoner, realized the importance of continuing to go on that sailing trip, because he knew that it was his job to declare the message of freedom, to declare the word of God in Jesus Christ to Rome. And so we read that he embarked with the other captives on this voyage over dangerous waters.
But not only were the waters dangerous, the time of the year was dangerous. We read that it was after the Day of Forgiveness, or the Day of Atonement, somewhere in October or early November, when ships would rarely sail the seas of the Mediterranean because of the winds. We read that a particularly dangerous wind, the Euraquilo, came up from the northeast and could destroy ships.
Now remember, in the time of Paul boats did not have a sextant; they did not have a compass; they were often very crude and you navigated them by sight and by feel and by the horizon. And so when a northeaster came up, boats had to go into a haven because it was too dangerous. Often, they would stay there all winter because they knew they could not go any further.
Not only that, but remember this: At the time in which Paul was writing and the Bible was written, they believed the world was flat. If you couldn't see where you were going, you could, in fact, sail right off the end of the earth. Therefore, it was even more dangerous in a poor ship, in bad weather, to sail where you could not see.
We read that the winds came up and the people on the boat were frightened. Paul himself, of course, was a prisoner on that boat, but he said: "I don't think that we should set out to sea. I have had a vision from God and that vision tells me it is too dangerous."
But the captain would not listen because he had to deliver corn to the mainland and was driven to make sure that he had the payment before the winter set in. And so he headed out, even though Paul had said not to. Off they went and the storm came up. The storm blew the ship so dangerously that they took shelter in Fair Havens and were not sure whether they could set out again.
Well, my friends, there are many times when we face moments when the wind begins to blow, when the future is uncertain, or when the storms of life begin to toss us and we do not know what lies ahead of us. How then should we react when the storms begin to blow? What should we do when we are faced with the challenge of the wind blowing, like the Apostle Paul faced?
Well, he gave two very good pieces of advice, and both were preceded by the phrase, "Take heart for not one life will be lost" - he was convinced of that because of the vision that he had received. This was a call to keep up one's courage in the face of adversity. The problem was that those on the boat didn't believe Paul's words. They had abandoned hope. They were even ready to abandon the ship. They were throwing things over the side in order to keep afloat. They were terrified and they would not listen, they had lost all sense of courage and had nothing on which to rely. When Paul said that not one life would be lost, they were cynical. They couldn't believe him.
Now, the Apostle Paul could have turned on them. The Apostle Paul could have said, "I told you so," although he did tell them that he had told them so. He could have told them that they were lacking in courage, or lacking faith. He could have been like the little girl who was debating one day with her school teacher about whether a whale could swallow a human. The teacher was convinced that because whales have small throats they could not swallow a human being.
The little girl said: "What about Jonah? Didn't Jonah get into the stomach of a whale?"
The teacher said: "But it is physically, biologically impossible for this to happen!"
"The little girl said: "Well, in that case, when I get to Heaven I will ask Jonah myself."
The teacher said: "But what if Jonah went to Hell?"
And the little girl said: "Well, in that case, you can ask him."
The Apostle Paul could have done that. He could have turned. He could have been angry. He could have been cynical himself, but he wasn't. On the contrary, he urged the people to examine their situation more closely and take courage.
He did so by first of all challenging them about their priorities. He said: "Look, the boat may be destroyed but not one life will be lost."
Very often, my friends, we are afraid about things that don't matter. We worry about losing things that are of little or no importance. We stress ourselves about money, or about property, or about position and we do not think of the important things of life. We have a society that's almost hell-bent on being frightened about losing things that in the end do not take life: That grandmother who left the Ukraine, sold everything because she knew that freedom was more important than any penny or ruble that she could save. So she understood where her priorities lay. Our society gets stressed out and fearful and lacks courage because we have the wrong priorities.
We also forget to put fear in its rightful place. Paul did it. He said: "Take heart. No life will be lost. Look at the big picture."
Very often, my friends, we do not do that. We become frightened and we lack courage when we need it the most. Talking to men and women over the last few days, ever since the announcement from Osama bin Laden that Canada is on the list of potential targets, I have sensed (and maybe I am being hypersensitive) a degree of fear that our society has not faced before: To think that we, good, free Canadians, could possibly be the targets of such things terrifies us. We must always remember to put fear in its rightful place; and when we put give fear in its rightful place, we are sensible. Like Paul, we must not put ourselves in positions where fear may terrorize us, but when we face that fear, we have some courage.
The other remarkable thing that the Apostle Paul did was to say that not one life will be lost - yet he himself was a captive. His jailer had put chains around his arms and his legs and enslaved him, and yet he had the power and the strength still to forgive, still to be concerned for, still to assume the safety of his captain and his captors.
So often our fears are a direct result of the fact that we don't have the power to forgive and we don't take the time to forgive. If we would forgive a little bit more, I am sure we would fear a whole lot less.
The Apostle Paul made it abundantly clear that the people needed to have courage to get their priorities right, to put fear in its proper place and to have the power to think of everyone and not just themselves.
But on what was this courage based? On a second thing: on faith. Paul said: "Take heart, for I have faith in Jesus Christ that his word to me can be trusted and is true."
You see, the Apostle Paul had not only a vision. He also had a faith that sustained him to such an extent that even when the winds blew and the boat was tossed he was assured that he and those that were around him would be safe, because God said so. He changed the way in which everyone on the boat began to look at the horizon.
I was reading in the National Geographic in 1997 the story of Steve Fawcett, who tried to sail a balloon around the world. Many of you will remember that this man left St. Louis, Missouri and for three days he sailed his balloon eastward across the Atlantic Ocean at 24,500 feet. As he sailed across the Atlantic he started to approach the North African country of Libya, but Libya had refused him air rights and threatened to shoot him down if he were to enter its airspace. And so Steve Fawcett realizing that he couldn't alter the winds with a balloon - you get swept along - could only do one thing: namely, change his altitude. And so he dropped 6,300 feet.
His balloon began to drift to the south and the east and to go south of Libya. Then he raised it another 10,000 feet and up it went, higher and higher, even further above where he was before and he began to go north again and get back on course. For the next three days, having avoided Libya, he sailed on, eventually to India where his traversing came to an end. But even so, at that time he had broken a record - six days, 10,000 miles. Steve Fawcett had done great things.
In writing about this, Bertrand Piccard had the following to say about a life lesson for all of us from what Fawcett experienced:
In the balloon, you are prisoners of the wind, and you go only in the direction of the wind. In life, people think they are prisoners of their circumstances. But in life, as in the balloon, you can change altitude, and when you change altitude, you change direction. You are not a prisoner anymore.
You see, my friends, on that boat on the Mediterranean, the Apostle Paul got the people to change their altitude, to look to God when they faced the wind. He did so on the basis on which all his life was predicated; the fact that God keeps His promises. Whether it was the promises to the people of Israel as they crossed into the Promised Land; whether it was the promise of Jesus Christ, that even though he would be crucified he would bring life to others, no matter what the wind might bring, God would remain faithful to His covenant promises.
At the end of the story of the Ukrainian family, the 17-year-old girl, Shelley, asked her grandmother one question. She said: "Grandma, who was the baby that you were carrying in your arms?"
The grandmother responded: "Dear, that was your father. That was your father."
You see, through the 10-year-old son who had waved his arms and given his life, that little girl was able to be born. Had he not, she would have not.
My friends, that is the message of the Gospel. The message of the Gospel is that God gave His Son in order that when the winds blow against us we might have life, and faith, and freedom. For these things every day we should give thanks. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.