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Heart to Heart
by Pat Chwialkowski
US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.
CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!
US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA; WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!
CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
This joke has made many people laugh over the years, including myself. Then again, I think there is a somber message hidden in this humorous dialogue. I think it is suffice to say: things are not always as they appear to be. Many times we allow our perceptions to rule, crowding out any kind of truth to come into the picture. The fact of the matter is: A lighthouse will always win out over a boat…even a big boat. I don’t care how fervent the Navy Captain believed that his ship was the biggest and most powerful thing on the sea, he was incorrect in his thinking. This Navy Captain forgot that there was something in the waters that night that was created to direct and guide him, not to be a threat but to be a help. If he would have kept on traveling on the path that he was on, he would have ran smack dab into a huge chunk of cement stopping him in his tracks. Talk about reality hitting you. And the truth of the matter, we too have a lighthouse in our lives that was given to us. We have been given the Bible which is God’s Word where we can find truth to base our lives on. Psalm 119:105 says it this way: Your Word is a map to my feet, and a light to my path. It was while reading the Bible that I discovered that my perception about life was completely incorrect. If I would have stayed on the path that I was traveling then, there would have been dire consequences, not only for me but I believe for my entire family. But God in His goodness shone His light on my path, which allowed me to divert my course and in doing so, I found eternal life. I wish I could have found this path sooner in my life, which would have saved me from a lot of needless heartache. But just like the sea captain, my pride was in the way of seeing the truth of the matter. It took God using circumstances in my life to get my attention. The following are words I had penned so many years ago in a journal. I keep these words to serve as a reminder.
I always thought “I knew it all”. It was an ego that was fed daily by all kinds of things that puffed me up way beyond any normal kind of self-satisfaction. Then a heart shattering revelation came to me. In a supernatural way, (which I really do not understand) God gave me a vision. He allowed me to see the very core of me. The part of me that only He is able to see. It was a vision of my heart that was so darkened by a putrid arrogance I could barely take it in. As I tried to get my thoughts together I sensed His presence in a powerful way. It was like I felt his arms around me. Oh, what a love it was! He began carrying me. It felt so good, so right, but oh so foreign. “How long, oh Lord?” I cried out. “How long have you been waiting for me?” I never heard an answer, and at that point it didn’t matter. What mattered was, God was holding me, and I was swept away by His embrace.
In 1977 Debbie Boone recorded a song titled “You light up my life” that won her a Grammy award for best new artist. Not very many people know that she recorded that song as a testimony of her relationship with Christ. One of the lines in the song says: Rollin' at sea, adrift on the water, could it be finally I'm turning for home? Where are you at right now? Maybe you are fighting the storms of life and barely able to keep your head up. Or, maybe right now life is smooth sailing for you. Nonetheless, the most important thing is not what you are experiencing right now, but what direction are you headed? Can you see the lighthouse from where you are at? If you can, sail on good mate you are on the right course. But if things are a bit foggy, maybe you’re not seeing things as they really are. There is a lighthouse out there and it does want to lead you to a safe haven. It wants to guide and direct you right into arms of Jesus. But as the CND replied to the navy captain: It’s your call.
The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. John 1:5
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Founder and Director of Key Ministries located in Lexington South Carolina. You can reach us at keyministries@yahoo.com. .
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