D.L.

Friends are friends forever!
There is an old Michael Smith song called “Friends,” and this song became like a farewell hymn for those who, after spending two years onboard the Logos 2, were leaving the ship and walking down the gangway, leaving behind a home and friends of a lifetime.
I still meet with some of my shipmates not as often as I would like, well that is not technically true, I married a shipmate!

Yesterday was a blessing as I reconnected with two amazing people from my time onboard the ship. It did not matter that I took a train form Amsterdam to Rotterdam to see them for a few hours and it was great, The bond that was created while we were together still is as strong as it was then, and even sometimes stronger. We first met almost thirty years ago, as the Tango says: “Thirty years is nothing”. (Treinta anos no es nada)

Hearing their stories and how the Lord has been so faithful to them made me realise the goodness of God. Not that I have forgotten it, but with the demands of life, we tend to lose perspective—that even though our blood families are so important in defining who we are and become, our spiritual family, the family of the body of Christ, has the same importance, if not sometimes deeper.

My experience onboard the Logos 2 was intense in all aspects. I spent almost three years living onboard with people from different countries and creating a singular culture that has defined me and will still shape me. This is also called discipleship.

The challenge is this natural tendency to glorify the past forgetting about all the challenges that we went through. This tendency is both helpful and detrimental. It is useful as it allows us to trace the many times the Lord came to our rescue and his many blessings over us. However, it is damaging when we start glorifying the past; therefore, we miss the present blessings and become hopeless. This is so true in churches; we tend to look at the old days and try to bring them back.

What was so refreshing about reconnecting with my shipmates was that even though we have a past, it unites us. Reminiscing with them brought much-needed hope, but hearing how the Lord is using them now is, I think, more powerful.

I recently spoke in church about the past, present, and future—what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do. In these time-bound sequences, we need to have the presence of God at the centre. If we don’t, we risk becoming irrelevant.

In Joshua four, the Lord told Joshua to order the priests to gather twelve stones as they crossed the Jordan River so that they would serve as a reminder of how the Lord brought the people into the promised land. He tells him that this act will serve future generations so that they will have hope, faith, and assurance that the Lord does not change. That he is faithful to his promises. That is past-present and future. I want to sit down over a meal and listen to my shipmates’ journeys, with all their challenges, and I can see that they are still standing firm.