Finding your direction

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life." (John 14:6)

In the earliest days of sea travel, mariners never sailed out of sight from land. When you are completely surrounded by water, it is easy to lose your sense of direction. So the first sailors hugged the coastline as they transported their passengers and cargo.

Eventually, navigators developed instruments which guided them far out into the ocean and kept them from getting lost. But these instruments would have been of no use whatsoever without an important feature of the night sky—Polaris, the North Star.

Of all the stars in the sky, the North Star is the only one whose position never changes. From the first minutes of dusk to just before sunrise, Polaris always marks due north. By using Polaris as a reference, a captain can pinpoint his ship’s location on his nautical charts.

Christ is our North Star. When we were born, we set out on a journey across the ocean of life. Before too long, the coastline was lost to us and now we find ourselves sailing over trackless seas, unsure of which way we should go. Sometimes we get so confused that we travel in circles, making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Sometimes we drift into dangerous currents that hurl us into the rocks of disaster, despite all our frantic efforts to change our course.

Christ is our North Star. When things are at their darkest, He shines the brightest. Even if we don’t know where we are, He shows us the way we should go. Like Polaris, He is unchanging—He always points us in the right direction. To help us navigate past danger, He has given us charts, His words printed between the covers of the Bible. He even gives us the instrument we need to plot our location and course—He gives us the Spirit of God through the miracle of Holy Baptism.

With star, charts and the Spirit’s help, our voyage through life can avoid ending in calamity. Guided by Jesus, life can be lived with confidence that we will end up exactly where we should—in the safety of heaven’s harbor, with our Master waiting on the dock to greet us.