Sailing Ahead…
When Benjamin Franklin served as the Postmaster General, he noticed that mail ships traveled faster from America to England than from England to America. He did some experiments with the help of his nephew (a sea captain of a whaling ship) and also during his own travels to England. He essentially discovered a “river” in the ocean that moved warm water from west to east. Today we know it as the Gulf Stream.
A few decades later, a navy lieutenant named Matthew Maury was inspired by a verse in Psalms.
This phrase “paths of the seas” caught Maury’s attention. He took God’s Word literally. He spent the greater part of his life documenting and charting maritime wind and sea currents around the world. His pilot charts enabled ships to shorten their travel time considerably. He is considered the founder of the modern science of oceanography. He always gave credit to God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and believed God’s Word as being the authority for any subject it touches.
The Gulf Stream is like a massive underwater river, moving a volume of water that surpasses that of all the rivers on Earth combined. It is one of the fastest ocean currents in the world.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this interesting bit of history. Just as God set up air and ocean currents, so He guides us in life, sometimes in ways not always evident to the eye. He does this for our benefit, and we move best when we move with His currents.
Afte
r Holding the Line was published, I took a pause in my writing. I needed to give my attention to family matters—some issues had recently sprung up, and others had been languishing. Now I’m diving in again. Or should I say, “sailing again”? My new book will be set on an ocean liner sailing from America to France in the 1920s, during the great age of transatlantic ocean travel.
I’m looking forward to sharing it one day with you!