Waiting for the Tide

"I know what I have to do now. I have to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise and who knows what the tide could bring."
Tom Hanks-Cast Away (1.30.2:12)

While convalescing, I watched Cast Away again. There's a part in the movie toward the end that really got my attention this time around. Maybe it's because I've been talking to a lot of people who felt like Tom Hanks did while stranded on the island.

There was a point during his four-year stay when he decided that he was never going to get off the island. He was going to die there, all alone. He was going to get sick or injured. He then decided that the only choice he had, the only thing he could control was the when and where and how of his demise. So he made a rope and climbed to the tallest point of the island where he tied the rope to the branch of a tree. He decided to test it first, so he used a man-shaped log. The branch broke. At that moment, Tom realized that he had power over nothing. He couldn't even kill himself the way he wanted.

He then said that a feeling came over him like a warm blanket, and he knew that somehow he had to stay alive. He had to keep breathing even though there was no reason to hope and all his logic said he would never see Memphis, Kelly, anything ever again. So that's what he did. He stayed alive. He kept breathing.

And then one day his logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave him a way to get off the island. He got to see Memphis again. He got to see Kelly again. And even though Kelly had moved on with her life and he had lost her all over again, he was still grateful that he had had her with him on the island. He was terribly sad over what he had lost, but he knew what he had to do-he had to keep breathing. Why? Because tomorrow the sun would rise and who knows what the tide could bring.

King David knew what Tom Hanks was talking about. He wrote the following during an especially difficult time in his life (Psalm 6):

"Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?
Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

Other people of faith throughout the ages have struggled with a hopeless situation and an inescapable logic that they would never see love, employment, children, health, purity, joy, etc. ever again. Sometimes the best that people of faith can do is to realize they have no real power over anything. Sometimes the best that people of faith can do is to decide to just keep on breathing, to stay alive just for today.

Why? Because tomorrow the sun will rise and only God knows what the tide will bring-and then we might find that our supposedly inescapable logic was all wrong.

~Shawn