THOSE OTHER BOATS

Well hello there dear gist partner. 

How are you doing this fine day? Enjoying the rains? Here’s hoping that you are fine and that God continues to keep you in good health. 

Welcome to today’s gist.

First of all, let me share with you one ‘fun fact’ about me: I feel almost physically sick when I don’t have a book to read, everything just feels not-quite-right in my world until I have a book that I am reading, so I would rather reread a book I have read before than stay and be going around without a book to read. I say all of that to say that yesterday, I found myself in the predicament of being book-less; I had read, I thought, all the books in my possession –both soft and hard copy books– and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself anymore. I was just about to start rereading an old book when I scrolled through my reader app again and I found one book that I hadn’t even read at all! Somehow in all my reading, I had missed the book completely. In fact, I found more than 1 of such books, it was like Christmas for me yesterday😂, and I immediately started the first one I had seen, ‘Forgiving Paris’ by Karen Kingsbury, it’s a part of the Baxter Family Series. Another ‘fun fact’ about me is that it was Karen Kingsbury and the Baxter family series that got me started on, and made me fall in love with, Christian fiction –God go bless that woman sha. 

Anyway, I was reading the book and I was still in the early pages when I saw something that struck me and I thought to share. Landon was giving his wife Ashley a retelling of the time when Jesus calmed the storm in the Bible (since today’s a day of many fun facts, here’s another one: Return, the love story of Ashley and Landon, was the first Christian fiction literature I ever read and it got me hooked on Christian literature, 11 years later and I’m still going strong). The story of the calming of the storm is a very familiar one in Christendom so I won’t retell it here today (if you want to read about it, accounts are in Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41 and Luke 8:22-25) but there is something Landon pointed out that I honestly hadn’t ever considered till today: there were other boats on the sea! It wasn’t only the boat that Jesus and His disciples were in that was on the water that day, it stands to reason that this would have been the case even if the Bible hadn’t mentioned it but then the account by Mark expressly records this fact: “And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him.”

(Mark 4:36 ESV, na me underline for the sake of emphasis). These other boats that were also on the water were undoubtedly facing the storm while the disciples were facing it too. But, unlike the disciples, they didn’t have the benefit of Jesus’ presence in their boats. However, immediately Jesus, in His own boat, calmed the storm, they too benefited from the peaceful waters and could smoothly continue their sail. Of course, the disciples didn’t necessarily consider these boats and their occupants when they were making the desperate plea to Jesus to save them but as a necessary consequence, the disciples’ plea and Jesus’ rescue of the situation benefited these other people. 

And that is the point being made here: there are a host of people whose lives are being affected by the experiences you have and the way your life turns out. Like the people in those other boats, these people may not even be in your life at the time when certain storms are assailing you, yet they would become beneficiaries of the victory you won in that particular storm. This brought to mind again a conversation I had with my brother, Sokombaa Egbeja, just yesterday about how sometimes God lets you go through certain situations not really for your sake but for the sake of those coming behind, those who will benefit from the lessons you have learned from your experiences, who will draw strength from your story and will win their own battles because of the ones you fought, these persons are the ones in the other boats, equally sailing through life, facing storms in their own journeys and benefiting from the fact that you, in your own boat, have called the Lord to speak peace upon the waters. 

So, don’t go through life imagining that you and what you do doesn’t matter, that’s a lie! Lives are being influenced and affected, and will continue to so be, by your own experiences. 

My encouragement to you, and to me too, is that on those days when there is a strong temptation to give up, to let your storm overwhelm you, remember the other boats in the waters, and for their sake, fight!! That their storms too may become calm because you didn’t yield to yours. 

May the Lord help us to remember that lives are affected by how we live ours. 

TUNES AND THOUGHTS: our song recommendation for this week is ‘Mi Amor’ by Mr Wealth. I watched a mini-collab version of it and I went to look for the song, God!!!!!! Just go listen to the song!!’ The song is a heart cry to God for increased love, increased desire. It’s a song of hunger for people who are really hankering after ‘the more’ that is always available in God for His children. The chorus of the song goes: “Here I am, Here I stand, saturate my heart with Your love. I want to love You more and more, Mi Amor.” May this song bless your heart and reawaken, or renew, your desire for God. 

Audiomack: https://audiomack.com/mrwealth-priceless-freedom/song/mi-amor-mr-wealth-m3?share-user-id=140072136 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3UeD0JDlaDjh5Hgj1upWSe?si=AN8OAqQkRV-M2rwXeD8VOQ 

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv9r0A9D-Hs&si=1GNL07JnFHU_6oMZ 

Well, that is that about that as far as that is concerned. Till next week!

Love,

Achenyo Favour Salifu, Esq. 

PS. Two weeks as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria!!!