Bailing out your boat

If your life is a boat that you feel you’re constantly bailing out, constantly riding the waves as they lash against the hull, water washing over the side and breaching the gunwale, take peace today.

It’s easy to say that, isn’t it?  “Take peace,” he said!  Just how do you do that when you constantly feel you’re bailing out your boat.

Take peace in the fact that in constantly bailing out your boat you’re still here, alive, surviving enough to tell your tale.  You may well smile for the crazy things you’ve been through, the rolling battles, the threat of tyranny, the great escapes.

Amid the storms of life, you’ve prevailed to the point now where you may ponder peace.  Even as chaos threatens to reign, you can push it back in your mind’s eye, as you reassure your heart, “Be safe.”

Down the passage of time you’ve endured sleepless nights, a body tortured by myriad aches and pains, a terrified mind, threats from without and within, anxiety and depression, grief that taught you that life changes you forever in the blink of an eye, and unimaginable stresses.

As you look back now, considering how faithful God is to have carried you thus far, helping you as it were in the bailing out of your boat, you can take a moment’s sojourn.  Consider it.  The potential of a moment spent with yourself, thankful for God’s care.

Take peace in the knowledge that you’re alive, and whether by pandemic or other such catastrophe, you will make it through.  You always have.  And even if you don’t, you can know the glory of having done all you could in the living of this life within the control you have.  Isn’t that peace?  To know you’ve done the best you could, notwithstanding the plethora of regrets we all bear.

Peace within imperfection... as you keep bailing out your boat.