Day 2: Maintenance

I'm still thinking about this boat imagery. When I was growing up, my Dad was a lobsterman. Every year around this time, just as the weather was warming up, Dad would pull his boat out of the water for a week to repair it. I never told him (I was a boy & makeup crazy pre-teen, so we didn't talk much about lobstering in those days) but that time out of the water always scared me.

Here's the thing: I've never been great at conceptualizing large numbers of anything, so I was a little fuzzy on how many lobsters he had to catch to keep a family of our size in back-to-school shoes. But it seemed clear that the number was HUGE, and that there were a finite number of crustaceans out there on the ocean floor for the catching. So taking his boat out of the water seemed absurd to me. Why risk a week of no lobsters? "So what if the paint on the hull is chipped and the engine needs tuning?" I thought. "The most important thing is being out there!"

Now though, I get it. (Dad has been retired for years, and I'm sure he'll be happy to hear that I've finally come to terms with the finer points of his profession...) If you don't take care of your boat, your whole operation is at risk. Wood rots, engines die...the cost of replacing things you haven't taken care of is far higher than a week out of the water. (BTW, I tried to get a picture of a boat in dry dock to illustrate this post, but mostly what I found was pics of boats run aground, which is an entirely different thing...)

Today, let's ask God if we need to pull our boats out for repairs. This might be literal--stepping back from our busy schedules for a few days to tend to our physical/mental/emotional/spiritual upkeep. Or it might be more of an internal thing, where we tweak some area of our lives that's showing signs of wear. Or--who knows?--some of us might be in great shape, ready to head out onto the seas and pull in a big catch. As we pray today, let's give God a chance to weigh in on that, and let us know what's going on under the water, so to speak, in the places we can't see.

(And out of the kindness of my heart, I'll spare you the Southern Cross video I'm watching right now, because I can't possibly keep up 40 Days of Boating Songs...and because I don't understand why Graham Nash, one of my favorite singers ever, is wearing that weird striped shirt?)

Here's the link to yesterday's prayer outline (scroll down to the bottom).

And today's quote is my all-time favorite, Jesus' reminder that "What is impossible with man is possible with God." Nice to know that if we need to take time out for repairs, it won't throw off God's plan.