Encouragement

I was able to talk to a friend on Wednesday. He was very encouraging, and his stories also reminded me that I need to be more serious about my prayer time and maintaining my spiritual health. Hair-raising stories about spiritual conflict tend to have that effect.

This morning I engaged in one of my more peculiar hobbies: creating analogies. For some reason I randomly remembered a speaker from NCU chapel telling us that a husband is like the bow of a ship. When an icy storm hurls itself at the family ship, he takes the beating and clears the path. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the wife is the sail. She is the one who propels the husband and the rest of the family.
Now here is the cool thing. God is the sailor. He controls the husband with the rudder and the wife with the sheets (ropes that control the sail). In order for the ship to sail correctly, both husband and wife need to be obedient to God. If the husband refuses to let God steer him with the tiller, the ship will wander listlessly about the ocean. In large waves, it will almost certainly capsize. How many kids do you know who seem to have been raised on a directionless boat? If the wife refuses to let God hold her taught in the wind, the ship won't go anywhere. In a low wind she will settle into the position of least stress and sit there, doing no good to anyone. In a high wind She will flutter and flail, making a horrendous amount of noise and swinging wildly back and forth across the deck- a serious safety hazard- and no progress will come out of any of it. Without any forward movement the tiller does minimal good, and once again the ship is in serious danger of capsizing.
I should probably end the analogy there, but I thought I would throw kids into the mix. The kids make up the hull (other than the bow). They might feel like they are just along for the ride, but they have a huge amount of impact on how the ship sails. If one of them becomes damaged, the ship leaks. The bilge pumps from one end of the ship to the other need to go day and night to make up for it, and the hull defect will slow the ship down. If the child declines too far, they could drag the whole ship to the bottom. Furthermore, this is a type of ship where bilgeboards run the full length of the hull. If a bilgeboard is not down at the right time, the ship will be blown sideways by the wind and not be able to hold it's course. If it is not pulled up at the right time it will create extra drag and slow down the ship. Worse, in shallow water, the bilgeboard could get damaged or the ship could get hung up. Each child needs to allow God to constantly adjust the bilgeboard on their portion of the ship. If they don't, or if they twist their bilgeboard into a shape that God never intended, they will seriously hamper the progress of the ship.