Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Psa 119:105

As a kid, did you ever play Pin the Tail on the Donkey at a birthday party? If not, here’s a quick description: A poster of a tail-less donkey is taped to a wall. One at a time, each child is blindfolded, handed a tail with a piece of tape on the back of it, spun around 3 times and pointed in the direction of the donkey poster. His mission is to make a stab in the dark in order to hopefully tape the tail on the donkey’s bum. It’s fun to watch the misguided attempts of dizzy kids. When the game is over, there are tails the donkey’s nose, its feet, on blank spaces on the poster, and even on the blank wall 6 feet away from that donkey! What could you expect? Those kids were navigating blind!

This morning I was thinking about sailors of long ago, before even early navigation tools, and did a quick search to see how they did it. I learned that in order not to get lost at sea, the earliest sailors always kept within eyesight of the coast. To do otherwise would have been a bit like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, using a ship instead of walking, and rather than moving around in someone’s living room, the space to navigate would have been an ocean! When you can’t see something, how do you steer your ship toward it? 

Eventually, though, mariners began to be observant of patterns in the sky and sea that had routine, that actually were predictable. They began to see that the paths of stars across the night sky always moved from east to west in a line. They knew that certain stars were predictably visible at certain times of the year, and predictably not seen in the sky at other times. The North Star became a valuable marker for them. Using these things, along with the predictably routine travel of the sun across the sky, they developed ways to know where they were by looking at where the sun, moon, and stars were in relation to the horizon. They also observed the seagulls’ habit of flying away from land with an empty beak and flying towards land with a beak full of fish. This told them which way land was and which way it wasn’t! 😊 This was extremely helpful for mariners sailing in summer months in northern latitudes where the stars wouldn’t be seen for months. 

They observed that even waves and ocean currents had patterns which, if learned, could be used to determine the best time of year to set sail for certain destinations. Down through the years more knowledge was passed down from sailor to sailor, allowing them to learn to use the constellations that were visible at the particular time of year that they were sailing in to determine which way they were headed. 

When God made the world, He filled it with routines, constants, patterns that would be there day after day, year after year. They could be depended on and they could be used to determine which course to take. Without them, we would be left to navigate blindly through life. 

Ancient mariners would never have ignored the sun and stars, or believed that they had scattered or changed course. Had they done so, they would surely have ended up lost at sea!

We now live in a world where established truths, including scientific facts are thought to be misguided ideas. For millenniums people l around the globe lived by the moral values established by God and written in scripture. Now we live in a time when good is called bad and immoral is called beautiful. We have set sail on a course without regard to the constants of truth God’s word gives us. It’s like we are on a ship in the middle of the ocean and think we’re heading to our chosen destination, but in reality, navigating by our own ideas and values have put us terribly off course.  

Lord, just as the earliest mariners knew they’d be lost if they didn’t keep the shoreline in their sight, bring us back to a place where we humbly acknowledge we need to keep the truth of Your word in our sight, and not stray from it. Just as the constant paths of the sun, moon and stars, and the long established patterns of even the waves safely led sailors to the port they were seeking, open our eyes to see that Your truths are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Those truths, those constants, have provided peace and rest for weary souls since the beginning of time. Break through the pride of our hearts and open our eyes to see that we are lost at sea and desperately need to find the shoreline of Your Word once again.