We began with a poster. A ship at anchor, at sunset. Two lines beside it:
A ship in a harbor is safe.
But that is not what ships are built for.
Four posts later, the question that poster raised deserves an answer.
We have covered the arguments that consume the church — cruise ship arguments, disputes about position and preference that a community with a clear mission would not have time for. We have traced the origins of the Adventist movement, born not from division but united around a shared expectation. We have examined the four timbers of Adventist theology and what they say to people who suffer. We have made the case that the mission runs not from warning toward fear, but from truth toward hope.
Now a word about what sailing actually requires.
God did not raise up the Adventist Church so its members could feel superior. I want to say that plainly, because it ranks among the more corrosive temptations in any tradition that believes it carries something important. Knowledge hardens into credential. Credential builds a wall. And the community called to carry the message outward turns inward, protecting its distinctives rather than sharing them.
We are chosen for service, not status. Those are not the same thing. We dare not make the mistake of confusing these things.
If you understand why bad things happen to good people — and I believe Adventist theology offers the clearest answer in Christian thought — then you are not superior to the person who doesn’t. You are more indebted. God gave you something everyone needs. We honor that gift, and the God who gave it, when we share it with others.
If you know that God does not torment people eternally, that the character of the God you worship aligns with the love He claims — that is not a badge. It is a burden of care for everyone still terrified of a God who doesn’t exist.
If you have experienced, even imperfectly, what the seventh day offers — a weekly pause built into time itself, available regardless of income or geography — you hold something worth sharing with people who are exhausted and don’t know why.
As I approach my seventy-seventh year, I have seen much to criticize in the church. Even though a pastor once told me, to my face, that my existence was a problem for the church—I stayed. I stayed because the teachings of this church answer the questions that matter most, and I have not found anything else that does it as well.
Ellen White said, “The church, enfeebled and defective though it be, is the only object on earth on which Christ bestows His supreme regard.” It will always be enfeebled and defective, because it is made up of people—people like me, people like you.
And yet God has bestowed upon us a great gift—the gift of hope, and the opportunity to share that hope with a world drowning in despair.
Outside the harbor are people, people frightened and exhausted and quietly desperate. They do not need another warning. They need what God has gifted to us. They need hope.
Ellen White beautifully described the end of the story in these words:
The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats throughout the vast creation. From him who created all, flow life and light and gladness throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.
That is the port. That is where this ship was built to go, and to help others reach.
A ship in a harbor is safe.
But that is not what ships are built for.
We need to set sail. There are people in the water, waiting for a hope they can grasp.
If you’d like Ed to speak at your church, contact him at
BibleJourneys@Yahoomail.com
Put “Speaking Inquiry” in the subject line.
