Help, I'm Captive and I Can't Break Free

Life has a funny way of taking the wind out of our sails, doesn't it?  As I sit here tonight at this computer, I feel a lot like the boat in the picture above.  Actually, truth be told, I feel worse...like a half sunken boat about ready to capsize completely.

Have you ever been there?  For me tonight, it is weariness from the day's challenges and a moral dilemma/pride issue that I am working through,  But do you know what makes me mad?  This whole things just sort of snuck up out of no where...like a giant wave I didn't see coming.  I thought I was progressing fairly well in my walk with Christ.  He and I have really been working on a few issues, and if you had asked me two days ago, I would have told you all about the growth I have been walking through.

But, that was two days ago.  Tonight as I sit here blogging my thoughts, I feel like I have barely begun the journey to be made in His image. Today's trials bumped right into an old splinter I thought I had already removed.  Apparently, I missed a piece and today the saltiness of life's ocean of trouble has reminded me that though I am not where I use to be, I have yet to arrive at where I need to be.  Maybe Paul said it best in Ephesians chapter 2...

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So for now, I am going to strap on my favorite life vest and rest (or at least try to) in the knowledge that I am God's handiwork.  After all, even the winds and the waves obey His voice, and tomorrow, maybe...just maybe I will be brave enough to walk on the water and then I won't need my sails!

Join me?


**Photos from an unknown source.