“Now I urge you to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only the ship” (Acts 27:27).
A famous theologian wrote a parable in which a young man left his home in Kansas to become a sailor on one of those tall-masted sailing ships. After a few days at sea,
the new sailor was ordered to man the watch in the “crow’s nest,” high up on the mast. He began the risky climb up the mast, but the higher he went the slower he went. Finally, at the half-way point he stopped. He was frozen — too fearful of moving in either direction, up or down. The story ends with him clutching desperately to the mast, unwilling to risk the slightest move, and going nowhere.
Reinhold Neibuhr
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