Navigating Past a Shipwrecked Life

Many shipwrecks that have happened throughout history are because captains and even crewmen ignored the warnings. We think of the Titanic going down on April 14, 1912 hitting an iceberg in the north Atlantic; there was a time in Scripture when the apostle Paul (as a prisoner) was being transported to Rome to stand trial. He spoke to the officers of the ship: “Men,” he said, “I believe there is trouble ahead if we go on—shipwreck, loss of cargo, and danger to our lives as well” (Acts 27:10). But Paul’s words were ignored, and the ship did, in fact, finally wreck on the island of Malta (Acts 28:1). Rewind further in the Bible, and we read the account of Jonah attempting to run away from the Lord, and the near-disaster brought upon the ship he was on – headed for Tarshish instead of Nineveh, where God asked him to go.