Finding an anchor

“Oh God, your sea is so great and my boat is so small.”

This prayer of Breton fishermen speaks of human life directly and clearly. It has become the motto of the Children’s Defense Fund and is the title of a new book by the fund’s founder, Marian Wright Edelman. Admiral Hyman Rickover had it engraved on a brass plaque and presented it to President John F. Kennedy.

It was true for Admiral Rickover, it was true for President Kennedy, it is true for Dr. Edelman, it is true for each child needing defense, and it is true for me and you.

The sea is so great; our boat is so small.

The next words of the prayer are not recorded. Perhaps each of us has his or her own stanzas describing what the journey of our lives is like.

We are afloat in a grand sea. We have the sense that at one time or another we were in port. We may or may not remember setting off. Was it morning or evening? A sunny day or a windy one? But of this we can be sure, we cannot return again to the port from which we sailed.

It is as if each of us awakened and found herself at sea, in a small boat, perhaps with a sail, perhaps with oars. We are not without resources. We have found ourselves with many people including, perhaps, family members and loved ones whose presence we can count on. Our physical location surely has changed since we were young – and even if we are near that first place it is not, it cannot, be the same.

Perhaps our dresser or desk drawers or attic contain mementoes of another time. Perhaps our houses are furnished, or our walls decorated, with artifacts of our heritage. Perhaps we have saved letters, or books, or documents which represent something closer to our foundation.

Most likely our names display our beginning, one given to us by those who birthed us or adopted us, one splashed on us perhaps at baptism or carried, sometimes, through the generations.

But our beginning is lost to us in history, and although we recognize it as the home from which we have come, we do not know how to identify it in any other way than by a longing within, a missing-of-it, which is now weaker, now stronger, but always present in the quiet times and actively amiss in others.

The longing is something like praying, something coming up from the depths, from a knowledge we do not consciously possess but which is uttered from our very being. It may be the Holy Spirit praying within us, or at least the invitation to that spirit. It is that Longing which suggests that we are not complete, that we are going somewhere, that all is not yet done, that there is a drama of our particular being which is being lived out amidst the multifold dramas of the world we inhabit.

The longing is the bona fides of our actual existence, the certificate of identity from which our life began. And it tells us that we are alive.

Alive and searching. Alive and uncertain. Alive and aware of the passing of time. Alive and seeking to accomplish something, to be someone, to love someone, to know and to do and to feel. Alive to be worthwhile. Alive to follow Jesus, to serve God.

Alone and afraid: O God, your sea is so great and our boat is so small — and time and tides wait for no man, no woman. We are cast adrift, and when we look around at the time of day when nothing can be missed, nothing forgotten, we know we need an anchor.

That is where the frustration sets in. For there is nothing permanent to which we can be attached. It is not place, or person, or possession, or profession.

We are looking for an anchor, or for an anchorage.

It is, bluntly, God or nothing.

But if it is God, that is only a name for the problem, — for we do not hold God. We cannot guarantee his presence, we cannot any more than metaphorically put our foot on his commandments or stand upon the rock of his word. His appearance to us in the spirit is beyond our understanding and surely beyond our beckoning.

God is essential to us, if we are to find foundation, but we do not control God. And thus the Breton Fisherman’s Prayer. Life is so much greater than I am, and I am so small, so insignificant before it. I am at sea without an anchor, and only you can tell me of home.

Faith is the heart-rope which ties the tiny spirit-craft in which we reside to the massive, eternal rock of our salvation. There is no other tether. If there were, we would surely seize it. But there is not. The anchor is so far in the depths that we cannot possibly see where it grabs the solid rock. But sometimes – when there is nothing else that can be done – and sometimes – when it is just an ordinary day – and sometimes – when the sun is high in the sky and the wind has died down – we can grab the rope. And then deep down, farther down than we can imagine, the anchor bites into the ground, and it won’t go any further, and it is absolutely secure.

And you are there.

The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Pastoral Director