March 28 2018 – Click here to listen
This morning I thought of a trip I took with a friend. We were returning to the Florida Keys via my boat. It was a long 260-mile trip and was rather monotonous riding along with the boat on auto pilot. The waters of the Atlantic were unusually smooth with little wind and we made great time. As we entered the final 82 mile stretch of our trip and began crossing the Gulf Stream, I noticed a storm on my radar. In the summertime it is quite common to have thunderstorms pop-up here and there. A very large ominous looking thunderstorm was moving towards us, but it was moving about ten miles an hour and we were moving forty. It would be no problem whatsoever to avoid it.
By this time, I was bored silly from the long ride and decided to have a little fun with my buddy. The guy who went with me was a complete novice to boating and blue water fishing and knew nothing of summertime thunderstorms in the Gulf Stream.
Suddenly I feigned looking at my radar screen in earnest with a worried look on my face. I started changing screens to enlarge the storm and moving the cursor in relation to our boat and muttering to myself that this was not good. He was watching my every move and asked about the dark menacing looking storm which was readily apparent off to our right. I said that I did not see any way to avoid it as it was moving too fast. I told him I was more worried about the lightning strikes than anything.
His eyes started getting big and he asked what I wanted him to do. I suggested that the best advice I could give was to pray. I then told him that when the storm hit to get to the lowest point of the boat and curl up. I casually mentioned that these storms were preceded by a “wall of water” with winds howling at forty or fifty miles an hour. I further related that the first hurdle we had to survive was the huge wave from the initial surge of the storm and then of course the lightning. “Hopefully we will make it through without sinking”,
I solemnly said.
By now his eyes were even wider and a very serious look was on his face with jaws clenched.
I don’t really know what possessed me to be mean to my friend like this, but it got even worse when I stated to him that there was something wrong with the boat engines. (My boat had been in Marsh Harbour in the Abacos for a month getting the engines repaired whereby they had failed a month earlier on vacation. We had flown down to pick the boat up and bring it back to the Keys after it was repaired) I had eased the throttle back a little and told my buddy one of the engines was losing power. I then told him if we were to lose power in this storm we were “done”. I tried my best to muster a grim look.
We rode along for miles with my buddy standing there in the heat wearing his life jacket and wildly looked at the radar screen which I’d turned to animate mode on a continuous loop which made the storm appear to be moving directly towards us. The screen detects clouds as well as rainfall and was covered in bright red, yellow, and green colors like what is seen on television weather updates, and with the high clouds appearing to be stretching nearly to our boat which was readily visible on the screen. It seemed to indicate that we were “goners”.
Finally, after about fifty miles of this, as we began pulling away from the storm, I started laughing like a Hyena and finally told him the truth. Initially he was not amused, but he then saw the humor in it and we had a good laugh.
I thought of a Bible verse in Proverbs that states: “Do not devise evil against your neighbor”. Was my act evil? Was this deception a work of Satan? Nah, I think it was just a little good-natured fun, but then I found the verse below and I think the Lord might be telling me something
Proverbs 12:15
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes