This is what happened to us. All the cars stopped, and slowly as we waited for them to start moving again I realized that they weren’t going to move. They weren’t going to move for another four hours. We were eleven spots away from getting onto the ferry. We thought we were on time, but we weren’t. Last year we had made the ferry, but this year there were more people and this year they had arrived earlier. We were out of luck.

Now don’t feel too sorry for us. It wasn’t the end of the world. We were on Lopez Island in Washington’s San Juan Islands. Probably, one of the nicest places you can be in America though the ferry dock is a bit subpar for the Washington state ferry system. And we were able to sit out on a nice grassy bluff that overlooked the Salish Sea, and we talked to some friends that were also on the trip and missed the ferry too. But if you are like me, and always are looking to make things go like clockwork, and you have four children with you and a dog all wondering now why they have to wait. You may understand that after a while; your mind may wander away from the peace and quiet you are trying to achieve to an underlying worry and discontent.

And with that underlying worry and discontent a funny thing starts to happen. Perceptions start to get a bit distorted. Let me demonstrate. Just when we were getting tired of waiting, a ferry showed up. It came at a very convenient time. And it was coming from the place we wanted to go.  As we watched the ferry come in, I got lots of questions which can be summarized easily with this phrase. Was it our ferry? Only, it was not our ferry.

I assured the kids it was not our ferry. It was arriving at the wrong time, and even though it was coming from where we wanted to go, it was coming from the wrong direction that our ferry was going to arrive from. But slowly our group made its way from the bluff back toward the ferry line to check it out, and I began to wonder. Actually, I began to worry. Could it really be our ferry? After all, it would be very convenient if it was, and the ferry schedule had been running way off a lot lately. I started to become anxious. Even if all logic told me I was correct, a combination of the others around me and my own desire for it to be true caused me to question myself to the point that I got up. I jogged quickly toward the car and the ferry line. Sure enough, I made it up to where I could see the cars and…well all the cars in our line, waiting for our ferry, were just as still and parked as they had been for the last two hours. It had been much ado about nothing.

Isn’t that how finding peace in a busy world is sometime. We fall for the distraction because of others pestering us and our desires for something to be true despite it being contrary to the truth we know. Proverbs 28:26 (ESV) says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Where do we get wisdom from? We get it from Jesus. Jesus who rose from the dead and shook the world and fulfilled over 400 prophesies from the ancient Old Testament texts.

Hebrews 3:1 (BSB) says, “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, set your focus on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” When we trust our desires and perceptions instead of what we know is the truth, we worry and can find ourselves running about after nothing. But when we keep our focus on Jesus, we are working in the realm of the permanent and real. The challenge of the age we live in is to keep the focus on the right thing, at the right time, and in the right place. The best way to do that is to keep our focus on Jesus as shown in the Bible. 

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.