Guest Post: On saving lives at sea - and souls on land

"Can you walk on water? That would be handy. How about parting the sea?"

There are only a few jokes and teases that connect my day job as a vicar to the volunteer work I undertake on the Porthcawl Lifeboat - and if you can think of another one, I've probably already heard it. 

It's partly due to this natural humour that the story around my wedding, interrupted as it was by a lifeboat shout, became such a news sensation. It was after the rush of pagers going off, crew darting out of the church during the sermon, and the joy of a successful tasking, that there came the now famous pictures of my wife and I having our (almost) first kiss aboard the D-Class Lifeboat. 

The story was quickly picked up by local news outlets, and we thought that would be it. It wasn’t long however until ITV, the BBC, and others got in touch. Phone calls and zoom-meetings interrupted our long-planned honeymoon lie-ins as we appeared on breakfast TV interviews from the comfort of our hotel suite. I had to rummage through my luggage to see if I had any RNLI branded attire. Observant watchers will have noticed the same polo-shirt making several appearances. Some newspapers tried to outdo themselves with punning headlines. Favourites of mine included "RNL-I do!" - and I'm especially grateful for whoever thought to suggest the dual interpretation of SOS - saving souls, indeed. The story has now been followed up by the BBC in their Thursday Night documentary series Saving Lives at Sea. You can follow along with the story on episode 7 of series 8, it airs on Thursday 9th November [editor - or watch it on BBC iPlayer after the fact].

Returning to the jokes watery jokes that connect the ostensibly disparate parts of my life and ministry; I must confess that these kind of comments give a sense of relief to this evangelical clergyman. They assure me that there is still a deep cultural connection to many of the Bible's stories. One of my jobs as a minister is to show the profound connection between the stories we live, the individual stories of the Bible, and the Bible's Great Story of God's saving work in Jesus. This isn’t about working to make the Bible relevant; it’s about pointing to the Bible’s supreme relevance to every aspect of our life and experience.

One of the stories that persists in the popular imagination concerns the wilderness wanderings of God's people. I've been asked on more than one occasion by people outside of the church "didn't Moses have a satnav?" Yet, even amongst faithful Christians, the details of this part of salvation history are often left unexplored. My hope in writing Journeying with God in the Wilderness was to connect the reader, and their own person stories, to these wilderness accounts through other, more familiar, New Testament passages. Journeying with God in the Wilderness undertakes this work of connecting our stories to the wilderness stories of the Bible, so that we can deepen our understanding of God’s saving love made manifest even through our most difficult times.

There are many types of wilderness that can be informed by the particular wilderness experience of God's people - even the sea itself. Of course, the great watery expanse that the ancient authors of the Bible knew about does not, strictly, fall within the semantic range of the word 'wilderness' - but for many modern day seafarers, there is a considerable overlap in terms of experience: the sense of aloneness, distance from safety, uncertainty. "Being adrift" or "all at sea" are nautical phrases which might help us understand the plight of wilderness wanderers as we seek to understand our own situation.

Understanding ourselves, and the situation we find ourselves in, is an essential part of our salvation. And it is through connecting our own stories with the story of the Bible that we see our true state, and our only hope. We do not reach for the life raft until we know we're drowning; we do not long for the promised land until we realise we’re in the wilderness; we do not call on the name of the Lord Jesus until we know that we are lost without him.

Journeying with God in the Wilderness allows us to begin to explore more fully our own stories, in the light of the story of God’s people. Where we have experienced wilderness or have felt ‘adrift’ or ‘all at sea’, we will discover that we are not alone, and are not the first to feel this way. We will take this journey, not only as an exercise in self-reflection, but with a view to seeing God’s providential care and his hand at work in our lives.

For many Christians, Lent is the annual opportunity to undertake serious self-examination as a form of preparation for the joy of easter. In the earliest days of the church, those seeking baptism would undergo Lent as a period of discernment and correction. The forty days of lent remind us, of course, of the 40 days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness, but in turn that should remind us of the forty years that God’s people were tested, purified, proved, and even wooed by God in the Wilderness.

This Lent, seize the opportunity to understand your stories in the light of God’s story, and join me in Journeying with God in the Wilderness.