That’s our whole story, and it’s the work I do.

Here is the work: I work the inbound crossing. A ship approaches the harbor, close enough to see the lights, and strikes the bar in the shallows. That bar is a ridge of sand and silt, shifting with the tide, hidden just below the surface. A vessel can be within sight of safety and still ground there. Someone who has learned the soundings stands in the troubled water and calls out the channel.

Ina Ogdon wrote in her song, “Brighten the Corner Where You Are”: this meaningful verse: “Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar.” The harbor is life in Christ. Psalm 107:30: so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

Then, toward the end of our life, the ship turns around. The tide rises. The evening star comes out. And it puts out again, not into danger, but into the divine Pilot’s presence forever.

Tennyson: For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place, the flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face, when I have crost the bar. We who look to the Word of God for His promises and assurance do not only hope to see Him. We know we will see Him.

I stand where the water is shallow and the current drags, and I help people across the bar into the harbor, into life in Christ, who is the haven. And I tell them, when the evening comes and the tide rises, that the same bar they crossed coming in is the one they will cross going out, and that the divine Pilot is waiting on the far side, to bring them home into His presence and eternal blessing forever.

One bar. Two crossings. The first is rescue, out of the shallows and into life in Christ. The second is arrival, out of this life and into eternity with Him.
The harbor is sure. The bar is real. And the divine Pilot is not a metaphor. He is a Person, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Hebrews 6:19: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.

Marc Senior