Week 8, Day 4 (Acts 27:1-44)

The whole time I was reading today’s passage and Adam’s devotional, I was imagining myself standing on board a ship and looking into the distance toward some landmark, like lighthouse and harbor where I was headed to land. I imagine that sailors would have had that same mark in mind – but unlike Paul (and us) they didn’t have any assurance that they would reach the mark they were aiming for.

God gives us promises. Sometimes these are specific (a prophesy maybe), sometimes general (promises in the Bible). Either way, we know that there’s a string linking now to then that will remain unbroken and that we can trust in, because God set out the string and the beginning and the end.

What we don’t know is how we’ll get there. This is important, and I think where Christians (myself included) frequently get discouraged. When we learn that we have something to look forward to in the future, and God is the one who’s promised it to us, we start spinning our minds and guessing how it will happen. We think it means that the path to getting there will be easy and pleasant. Often it’s just the opposite.

Sometimes I wonder if God gives us promises so that he can take us through more trials (refinement) in the mean time, knowing that if we have something set in stone in the future, our faith will be strengthened – we won’t give up as we might have done if we didn’t know the outcome. God wants to make us fully ourselves, which means throwing us into the rock tumbler of life. We get tossed around and worn away so that our true colors shine, and we can be confidently, boldly, fully and beautifully who we are.

I know that (as Hebrews 12:11 says) “no discipline seems pleasant at the time,” but as I look at my life as a whole, I’m grateful that on the way to the things God promises, I’m made more and better. In a way, that seems closer to the point anyway: working out my salvation, being transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ, etc. As Adam writes in the devotional, “Let’s see God’s hand in [the trials] and thank Him.”

-Emily Nisch