Sailing into the Great Unknown

By Janet Rubin

Spending his life weaving in a stuffy little shop like his dad wasn’t Christopher Columbus’ idea of fun. No, his life, his love, and his lady was the sea. Little Chris hung out at the docks, learning all he could from the sea men, and dreaming of the day he’d go on his own voyage.

My daughters and I have been learning about Christopher Columbus in our home school. We are reading several books on his life simultaneously. It’s interesting that different authors put different slants on his motives. Some paint him as a greedy man who mainly headed west to gain fame and fortune. Others insist his journey was more of a missionary trip, his main aim being to spread the gospel. Still others maintain that Chris was a strong Christian with a sincere desire to spread the gospel, but struggled with greed along the way. But all agree on the fact that he was a young man who longed to sail.

One of my favorite accounts is given by Peter Marshall in his book, The Light and the Glory, a book that emphasizes the hand of God in history. Marshall ’s first point is that Columbus had a God-given love of the sea. How simple! Of course, if God wanted Columbus to discover the New World , that He would give Columbus a love of the sea and an adventurous spirit! While the other men sailing with Columbus grew fearful and begged him to turn back, he determined to move forward, on into what Europeans called “The Sea of Darkness.”

God designed each of us with particular desires and interests. Some grow up with a love of people or animals or music or acting or tinkering with machines or cooking. Me, I grew up loving books and wanting to write my own. If you traveled to Connecticut and dug around in my mom’s basement, you’d find little construction paper books held together with staples, telling all kinds of tales. When I made those, I wrote about a girl named Jessie who flew off to New York to be a dancer. Twenty years later I’m writing suspense.

It’s easy while plodding along the road to publication, to experience all kinds of doubts and fears. What am I doing? Am I supposed to write? Will I ever be good enough? It is good to be reminded that God is the One who put that insatiable desire to write in us in the first place. The desire wasn’t a mistake—some evolutionary quirk—but a God-given love for words and story-telling.

What He wants us to do with that desire is a different matter—one we need to discuss with Him. Columbus didn’t know that the plan for him was discovering America . In fact, he went to his grave thinking he’d landed in India ! Yet, his discovery led to a whole New World . Where is your journey taking you? Only God knows. But he put a longing to write in your heart, so write. You may not land where you expected to, but you won’t fall off the end of the earth.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.