The Anchor

Life is wonderfully interesting. It's as if I am on a boat surrounded by complete blackness and the waters are awfully choppy, but not overwhelming. Sometimes I sit in terror with my arms holding to the sides of the boat, eyes closed tightly.The vast darkness seems less frightening with lids drawn together. Sometimes I row frantically trying to escape the unknown storm around me. The waves lap against the wood of my oars. All of my best efforts to take my vessel further from the center of the tempest fail; I am held firm by an anchor running down into the deepest depths of the water.


My desperate fingers seek to loose the chain, but find an unmovable rope. Every attempt to unlace the thick cord from my boat fails until eventually the challenge is abandoned. How much longer will this darkness capture my ship? Idle frustration builds until the breaks in the waves become a comfortingly familiar echo in my defeated mind. No more struggling to flee from the anchor, only a bitter acceptance of each slap of water against the decaying sides of the ship. My hands return to the rim resting uneasily and afraid to release their grip.


Let go.
a voice commands.


I am incited many more times before my fingers unlace from their safe embrace of one another. Darkness still surrounds me but I am no longer afraid. With the unfolding of my hands came an opening of my heart. I realize that the anchor isn't what is hurting me, but the darkness I feared. The Anchor is keeping me from being swept away by the frantic winds and spinning currents. The strong tether between my small, useless dinghy and my Anchor is perfectly made. This understanding travels down from my eyes into my heart assuring me that I am exactly where I was made to be.


Jesus is the Anchor. He is the lifeline holding me from the endlessly eclipsed ocean.