By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
Ko te Atua hoki nana nei i ki te marama kia whiti i roto i te pouri, kua whiti ki roto ki o matou ngakau, hei homai i te marama o te matauranga o te kororia o te Atua i te mata o Ihu Karaiti.
Auā o le Atua lava o lē na fetalai atu, “ ‘Ia pupula mai le malamalama mai le pouliuli,” na pupula mai i o matou loto ‘ina ‘ia malamalama, e iloa ai le mamalu o le Atua i fofoga o Keriso.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6
It’s 5:05 pm on January 23rd, 2023. Emma, Zoe, and I are on the Kaitaki, the Interislander Ferry, with 861 other people. The mayday call has just gone out. All four engines have failed in a staunch southerly out on Cook Strait.
The captain comes on the intercom. This is not a drill. The ship is on an emergency footing. Staff, to your stations. Everyone, put your life jackets on. Everyone is deadly quiet. People go about getting life jackets on their children, their elderly parents, and themselves.
Over the next couple of hours, the southerly winds steadily push the 22,365-tonne, 181-metre ship towards the Wellington Heads.
The lifeboats are lowered. The Cook Strait, at this point, is still too deep to deploy the anchors.
By this time, we learn every available emergency vehicle in Wellington, all the four-wheel drive clubs, search and rescue volunteers, police, and military personal have all been mobilised and are either on the shoreline or heading for it. The Major and the Prime Minister have been warned that this could be another Wahine disaster.
As we get closer to the shore, the anchors are deployed, but we continue to drift. The anchors are dragging along the sea floor, but still we are pushed by the wind. Over one kilometer after the anchors hit the bottom, and with not much further to the rocky shore, the Captain makes the following announcement:
“The anchors are holding. The anchors are holding.” He’ll make it again over and over throughout the following hour. “The anchors are holding.”
In the catastrophe that is the Corinthian church—in the rocky relationship between Paul and the Corinthians, in winds of sexual abuse, in the storms of persecution, in the bullying, the undermining, and the gaslighting that Paul and his team faced—the anchor of God’s grace alone holds him.
Paul says, just as God spoke light out of the darkness at creation, he makes the light of the knowledge of God in Christ shine in our hearts to make us new creations.
Just like the first act of creation, when God brought forth light out of nothing, God saved us and shone the light of the gospel into our hearts where before there was nothing but darkness. Our salvation is based on his work alone. Paul is revealing that his unswerving confidence is found in the grace of God.
Timothy Keller notes, “Why don’t we lose heart? We don’t lose heart because our relationship with God is not based on how much our hearts are set on Him, but how unshakeably God’s heart is set on us.”
Even in the storms and disasters of this life, the anchor of God’s grace holds.
