Jeremy L. Berg

From my forthcoming book Jesus Walks: A Guidebook for Spiritual Conversations in Nature.

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

–Ephesians 4:14-16

Walking the shoreline or beaches, one comes upon many natural treasures: shells, clams, jelly fish, coins, jewelry, and other hidden gems of the sea. I enjoy a good-sized piece of driftwood washing ashore after a long and aimless voyage. I imagine how many days it has been on the seas, and how many miles it has traveled, how many sharks have played fetch with it.

Though beautiful to look at, driftwood is not a metaphor you want to choose for your life and faith. 

Drifting is an unhealthy surrendering to the unholy inertia of the flesh. Instead of surrendering our will to the life-giving current of God—“letting go and letting God”—we adopt a spirit of passivity and resignation in our jobs, marriages, parenting, self-development, and spirituality. We take our hands off the wheel, pull our feet off the pedals, we lower our sail and let the external winds and waves around us carry us along aimlessly. Adrift. 

Paul warns us not to live out our lives as spiritual driftwood—“infants tossed back and froth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind” (Eph. 4:14). God wants us to chart a steady course, fix our eyes on Christ, live with purpose and grow into people of substance. “A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing,” wrote Thomas a Kempis. “Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught.” 

In our individualistic culture, young people leave home, head to college and feel the enormous weight to chart out their own personal path and make something of their lives. Some rise to the challenge, and quite successfully sail the seas of business and upward mobility—becoming in the words of William Ernest Henley, “The master of my fate…the captain of my soul.” But far too many others buckle under the pressure, fall off the ladder, grow demoralized and dispirited, abandon ship and join the large company of people adrift and discouraged. 

As driftwood is tossed to and fro on the water by the winds, tides or waves, it becomes food for birds, fish and other aquatic species. Gribbles, shipworms and bacteria attach themselves and decompose the wood, so what when remains when it washes up on shore it is often a lightweight, pale colored, hollowed out version of its former glory. While driftwood has a certain beauty and can be used to decorate one’s beach house or the inside a fish tank, nobody’s is building anything solid or functional with driftwood.

Likewise, when we give ourselves over to the winds and waves of culture and surrender to our baser instincts, all manner of unhealthy habits and sinful behaviors attach themselves to our lives, devouring us slowly from the inside out. We drift through life without joy or purpose, and if we don’t change course we’ll end up a pale, hollowed out version of the person God made us to be. While we still bear the image of God, in such a state we fail to serve the function God created us for.

A life with God, under the easy yoke of Jesus, can free us from the heavy burden of trying to discover our individual life purpose, by focusing us instead on our shared purpose of being built into God’s holy people, the Church. Dare I say, becoming a sturdy seaworthy vessel “joined and held together” by Christ’s love and power. As we all find our role aboard the Gospel ship and “each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16), we find ourselves part of God’s larger purpose in the world.   

Through the centuries, the church has been compared to a boat, a kind of ark of refuge for the people of God to ride out the storms of life together. The main area in a traditional church is called a nave, from the Latin navis for boat. A group of boats is a navy. The origins of the symbol of the boat is sometimes linked to the story of Jesus calling of the disciples to be ‘fishers of people’. The main origin of the symbol is to be found in Jesus’ stilling of the storm on Lake Galilee. This is a powerful picture for the church tossed around by the storms of this life, but held together by Christ’s presence and power. 

We have a choice to make when it comes to riding out life’s storms and traversing the seas of our future. Will we be a lone piece of hollowed out driftwood, tossed back and forth not the waves, and carried along by the ever shifting winds of culture and the unpredictable currents of our moods? Or will we let our lives be a vital part of God’s vessel, the Church, and together with the saints find refuge, purpose and direction under leadership of Christ, the true Captain of our fate? Remembering the words of 1 Tim 1:19:

“Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear.  For some people have deliberately violated their consciences;  as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.”