The Storm, the Shipwreck, and the God Who Brought Them All Ashore

Far out on the open sea, a wooden ship leaned hard to one side, and Paul held on.

He was sailing to a faraway city, and the wind had come up fast. It was not a friendly wind. It was a wild one, and it grabbed the ship and would not let go.

The sailors threw the ropes overboard. They threw the heavy boxes. They even threw the sails. Anything to make the ship lighter. Anything to live.

But the storm did not care.

Day after day it blew, and there was something on that ship that frightened the sailors even more than the waves. In the daytime there was no sun. At night there were no stars. Only gray water and gray sky, and the cold spray, and the deep groaning of the wood.

Without the sun and the stars, a sailor cannot tell where he is, or which way home might be.

For many, many days it was like that, with no light to steer by. Little by little the sailors stopped hoping. They stopped believing they would ever stand on dry land again. They gave up.

Then one night, when nobody on board had any hope left, Paul stood up among the frightened men, and his face was calm.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "Last night an angel of God stood right beside me and told me this. Not one of you will be lost. Not one. Every single person on this ship will reach the shore. God has promised it, and I know my God. He does exactly what he says."

Every one of them. The captain. The sailors. The prisoners in their chains. The soldiers. Not a single name left behind in the sea.

Long before this, on a little lake far away, Jesus slept in the back of a fishing boat while a storm shook it, and his friends woke him up, certain they were sinking. He stood and spoke to the wind, and the wind lay down still. The same Lord was watching this ship now, and he had already given his word.

And it happened just the way God said.

The ship struck a sandbar and broke apart, and the waves smashed the wood to pieces. Some people swam. Some grabbed a floating plank. Some held tight to a friend.

When they crawled up onto the beach, soaked and shaking and alive, somebody counted them. Two hundred and seventy-six.

All of them. Every last one, safe on the sand, with not a single person missing.

God had carried them through the longest, darkest storm, all the way to the morning, all the way to the warm fire the kind island people built for them on the shore.

When God makes a promise, a storm cannot break it, and the dark cannot hide one of his children from him. He keeps every word he says, right down to the very last name.

That is the kind of God he is, all the way to the end of the story. He is bringing a whole family home through the storm, and he will not lose one of them.

He has his hand on you already. And the bright morning he is rowing us all toward is coming closer with every wave.