A Crude Lifesaving Station

A Crude Lifesaving Station
by Theodore Wedel

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and their money and their effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Now some of the members of the lifesaving station became unhappy, in time, however, because the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable, suitable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. And so they replaced the emergency cots with beds, and they put better furniture in the now enlarged building, so that now the lifesaving station actually became a popular gathering place for its members. They took great care in decorating it beautifully and furnishing it exquisitely, for they found new uses for it in the context of a sort of club. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, and so they hired lifesaving crews to do this work on their behalf, and in their stead. Now, don’t misunderstand, the lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decoration and symbols — there was a liturgical lifeboat (symbolic rather than fully functional) in the room where the club initiations were held, for example — so the changes did not necessarily mean that the original purposes were totally lost.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold and wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty people and they were sick people, some of them with black skin, some with yellow skin. The beautiful new club, as you might imagine, was thrown into chaos, so that the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where these recent victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside the main clubhouse.

At the very next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities for being so unpleasant, as well as for being a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose, pointing out that, indeed, they were still called a lifesaving station. But these few were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. And so, they did just that.

Now as the years passed, the new station down the coast came to experience the very same changes that had occurred in the older, initial station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station had to be founded to restore the original purpose.

Well, history continued to repeat itself, so that if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a great number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!”

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At Resurrection, we can’t grow comfortable with just who and what we have here — to do so is to become a club. We need more trained lifesavers, because there is still a treacherous ocean full of people drowning, clinging to floating debris, about to lose their lives. This is perhaps as true now as at any time in the history of the church.

The true test of any decision we make has to be this: will what we are doing improve our ability to rescue the shipwrecked, or will it lead us away from this, and toward being just a club? "Evangelism" and "discipleship" are big, churchy words that really mean rescuing the shipwrecked and training lifesavers.

I’d like you to think of this church as the life station, and the members we have here as the lifeboats and crews. Each of these has an critical role in the life station, and we each are a vital part of the effort. Each of us takes a turn at keeping the station in good order, fixing up or expanding when necessary, and providing care and hospitality for the rescued. We meet together here to thank God for the privilege of serving Him in this mission, and hearing from him as he speaks to us. And He gave us a book - the Life-Savers’ Bible, we call it — that teaches us in great depth how to do lifesaving, and how to stay alive in a rough sea. Are we each studying it? Or is it simply on display as a club memento?

It’s all right, if you’ve just been brought in exhausted from the sea, to rest, be fed, and recover your strength. It is not OK, once you’ve begun to recover, to simply stay and enjoy the hospitality. This is not a club. It is critical that you and I join the rescue team, and get back out there to save our family, our friends and shipmates, and the many people we don’t even know, who may die without our willingness to reenter the sea and help to save them. We need to be constantly in training and ready to go.

Some of the victims of shipwrecks are too busy striving to get ahead, swimming in circles, thinking they are saving themselves. They don’t even know there is a shore or a life station, and they will fight you off — drowning people do that.

Others, out of pride, will insist that they are not drowning. They will cling to the flotsam, insisting they are OK, until they starve to death or drown or are consumed by sharks.

There are even some who will insist that there is no one lost out there, no need really to save anyone — that each person can have his or her own savior and that this is just fine. But those “personal saviors” are like pieces of debris, or another drowning person to whom people cling. The truth is that they are really still out at sea and are about to lose their lives. Their false private saviors, the flotsam, will go down with them.

Rescuers are trained to expect all of this. They battle the traitors, the sea and people’s false saviors every day. They know it is common for a drowning man to cling tenaciously to his tiny piece of wood, and fight off those who would rescue him and get him safely ashore. The rescuers stay near him anyway, praying, watching closely, until his exhaustion becomes so great that he finally gives in, and allows another to offer a saving hand.

This is what Jesus came to earth to do. He is always present in the life station, and is always with us in the lifeboats. He leads us to those who are drowning and helps them acknowledge their need to be saved. They are His hands that reach through ours to lift the drowning to safety.

This is all God-work. God wrote the book that teaches us how to rescue, and how to survive the rough seas. He speaks to us even today, when we learn how to listen to Him. He alone is the savior that is not just a fiction, a small piece of debris, another drowning person, any of which will prove useless.

So let us each examine ourselves, and let us examine this life station of God called Resurrection. Are we ready and willing to be what He called us to be? Are we club members, or lifesavers? If we are not yet trained, are we in training? Training is a lifelong process of renewal, anyway. Have we chosen to learn from the Life-Savers’ Bible, and each other, and from those more experienced than we are? If not, it’s time to do it, or go find a club.

This isn’t a club. It’s a life station. So let’s all act like it. It is what God called us to do.

- Pastor George