This 40-foot charter boat is the center of the world. Twin Chrysler Crown engines wrap you in a blanket of gentle sound, a symphonic background of harmony to enrich the crying gulls, the splashing sea. Enthroned high above the sea on the flying bridge, you attend your domain. The sea stretches majestically to the horizon, while purple waves dance beneath a sky so brilliant, so blue, it makes you smile just to watch. You inhale, slowly, deeply, filling yourself with the fresh salt air, smelling more than breathing, feeling more than smelling.

You're a twelve year old boy, captured in the sensuality of nature, in love with the sea. On occasion you laugh at your good fortune. You're the luckiest boy in the world! Your father has had the unusually good sense to escape the prison of a landlocked, northern factory town to run a charter boat on the Florida Keys. When you're not in school you're first mate on the Blue Marlin. You would do it for free. When grateful guests slip you a ten dollar tip for attending their needs, it only proves what a sad, deprived existence landlubbers lead.

Today you stand alone on the bridge, which is only to be expected. On the deck below six guests eat sandwiches and drink beer, laughing as your father tells fishing stories, all the more amazing and hilarious because they're true. Three lines follow in the wake, baited with live mullet. Here on the bridge you keep watch over the baited lines, you check the compass and adjust the rudder to keep the boat on course. You have the world to yourself, the talk below muffled and incomprehensible over the throbbing engines. The waves leap and roll around you. Until some majestic sailfish catches the scent and strikes one of the mullet, there is nothing to do but keep the boat on course, watch the bait, and enjoy the sea.

Sooner or later, they begin creeping in, as they always do. Questions, slithering in uninvited, unbidden as usual. Like your cat who sneaks into your bed when you're sound asleep, stealing your pillow and blanket, unnoticed until you awaken shivering from the cold. The questions slowly steal away the blanket of sound, sight and smell, until you suddenly wake. Shivering as always.

There are the sky, the sea, the rhythmic sounds, just as they were before. But now, rather than gently massaging you in your luxurious trance of pleasure, the sky and sea and sounds only provoke you. Where do they come from? How did they get here? What does this all mean? Where do you fit in all this?

Familiar options roll around your mind. Has it always been this way? Is this just the way it is... wonderful and gorgeous, but impersonal and unintentional? The absurd accident of random protons and electrons crashing around for no good reason?

But what if it were, after all, intentional? What if such incredible beauty and pleasure were on purpose? Could this all be part of somebody's plan? Is there a God?

If there IS a God -- not just some enormous, amorphous, unconscious force, but an actual, honest to goodness God, with thoughts and intentions and consciousness -- if there IS a God, then what does that mean?

Are you there, God...? Are you there...?

I can keep a secret; you can tell me. Just whisper it. I promise I won't tell. Show me you're there. God, if you're there... Please? Let me know that this all means something. That I mean something. That this isn't all just stupid and meaningless.

You don't have to do anything hard. It doesn't have to be spectacular. You don't have to write your name in the sky, or speak aloud, or cause a waterspout, or do a miracle, or anything like that. Just let me know. Oh God, show me that you're there.

You see that spot right over there? Just have a sailfish leap from the waves, right there. Nobody will see it, just me. Even if they do, they don't have to know you did it. They'll just think it's a lucky chance they got to see it.

Please God...?

Please God...?

You're a twelve year old boy, staring out at nature, trolling across the endless sea, a sea that is meaningless and cold, a sea lying dead beneath an empty sky. It's all very quiet; there's nothing there. You are quite alone. After all is said and done, you're only alone.

But you're still the first mate on the Blue Marlin, and you have a job to do. On the deck below six Yankee landlubbers eat their stupid sandwiches and drink their stupid beer, laughing as your father tells stupid fishing stories. Three lines follow in the wake, to catch a stupid fish.

You're about twelve miles from land, trolling back toward the Keys which lie west over the horizon, invisible. At this speed it will take two hours to get back to the reef line to nail a couple of kingfish or barracuda before calling it a day. And that's when you notice the plank, drifting north in the Gulf Stream, a half mile off the starboard bow. If you had come along five minutes earler, it would had been off the port bow. You couldn't have seen it, because of the glare of the mid-afternoon sun. If you had come along five minutes later, the northern flow of the Gulf Stream would have taken it out of your sight. Aware of your incredible luck, you call down below. "Dad, there's a plank about a half-mile off the starboard bow." He can't see it from the angle of the lower deck, but he calls back, "Let's do it!"

As your father heads below to break out the light, spinning tackle, you veer the boat off to the north. The six guests have no idea what we're doing, so we explain. When there is a wooden plank adrift in the sea, little fish often gather under it for protection from the sea gulls above. Bigger fish often gather to hunt the little fish, and still larger fish often hunt the big fish. This drifting plank in the Gulf Stream could provide the best fishing of the day.

As the Blue Marlin draws near, even the landlubbers can recognize the huge school of dolphin swarming beneath the plank. You are excited, for you know that dolphin -- not the "bottle-nosed dolphin", the mammal, not Flipper! -- you know that dolphin are terrific game fish. They're called Mahi-mahi in seafood restaurants. They put up a great fight on light, spinning tackle, leaping desperately in the air to escape the hook. They're beautiful to look at, and some of the best eating of all seafood. Spotting the plank is a great stroke of luck.

Slowly you circle the plank, drifting north in the Gulf Stream's flow. One by one the guests hook a dolphin, laughing and shouting as the fish fight for their freedom. The guests are thrilled -- it's the time of their life! They'll tell stories back home for years to come.

For the next hour six guests catch 42 dolphin. Then, for no apparent reason, the fish suddenly stop striking the bait. They continue to swarm beneath the drifting plank, but no change in bait or tactics make a bit of difference. It's the craziest thing you've ever seen. They swarm... but they don't bite. You look at your father, amazed. He looks at you, baffled. Eventually you shrug at each other and he tells you to point the boat home.

The problem is that you've been drifting north for an hour in the Gulf Stream, out of sight of land. You really don't know where home is, exactly. So you make a guess, pick a point on the compass, and ease the throttles ahead to cruising speed. No more trolling, it's time to move. The guests will talk excitedly about their adventure all the way home.

Ten minutes later you come upon a little boat, again off the starboard bow. What's it doing way out here? No boat that size ever should be this far out from land. And certainly not at this location. There's no reason to be here. The Blue Marlin would certainly never had been here had it not been for a drifting plank and a school of fish that suddenly, mysteriously quit striking after an hour drifting north. But there's something odd about the little boat. It's not moving... it's at a very strange angle... What in the world...?

It's your father who suddenly realizes what is happening: This little boat, 12 miles from land in shark-infested waters, is sinking.

Quickly you swing the bow to starboard. You must reach the boat before it goes under, pulling people with it beneath the waves. Anxiety fills your chest -- squeezing out all room for breath of air.

You pull along side the rapidly sinking boat, and watch six terrified people escape a would be coffin. Six people within five minutes of death. But more than the danger, it is the absurdity that strikes you. Venturing out in a tiny boat, without radio, without adequate life saving equipment, out of sight of land, into the most dangerous, most shark infested waters around --! How incredibly dumb! You can't resist the thought, such stupidity deserves what it gets!

Then, far more than the danger, far more than the absurdity, it strikes you just how improbable this all is. As the boat presses toward home, you gaze down to the deck below -- six excited guests sharing sandwiches and beer with six excited newcomers snatched suddenly from impending death. If there hadn't have been a plank... or if you hadn't been trolling westward when you did, you wouldn't have seen the plank. Or if it had been to the port rather than the starboard. Or if there hadn't been a school of dolphin swarming below it. If they hadn't struck the bait for an hour. If they hadn't quit striking when they did. If you had guessed a slightly different compass setting. If you had come upon the boat ten minutes earlier nobody would have known it was sinking. If you had come five minutes later there would have been no boat at all.

The incredible, overwhelming odds against this rescue are staggering. Nobody could ever have arranged all these circumstances. It is all too complex. All too absurd. All too impossible.

Or is it?

You didn't ask for something very hard. It didn't have to be spectacular. You didn't ask God to write in the sky or do a miracle, or anything like that. All you wanted was a little, mechanical, vending machine God. Drop in a quarter, out drops a little packet of metaphysics. You wondered whether God might be intentional and conscious -- but you never dreamed that God might refuse to show up for a David Letterman segment of Stupid God Tricks. You never dreamed that God might be gracious. You never guessed that a conscious, intentional, gracious God might send undeserving, drowning people a drifting plank, 42 fish, and an awestruck, twelve year old boy. You, like us all, can not tell where such a spiritual journey may ultimately lead -- yet you may sense that there is a Power greater than ourselves, a Power that leads to New Beginnings, a Power that calls us to Life, a Power that transforms the human soul. That Power is more than an impersonal "force." More than a Power, it is a Presence, it is Personal. That Power is God -- who came among us as one of us, in Jesus Christ. God encounters and transforms us now in the empowering, personal presence of the Holy Spirit.

If you are curious about what such a journey might mean for your life, we would like to meet you! Or, if you have already begun an intentional spiritual journey, and would like to become part of a band of others who are trying to help one another in our common journey, consider becoming one of us. There are never enough friends on the journey -- there is always room and need for more! We want you to become part of our growing spiritual community, to join with us on our quest to experience the spiritual power of Jesus.

As Jesus said to two new friends, "Come and see."

Note: I am often asked whether this is a work of fiction or an experience that really happened to me.

The truth is, it has been a long time since I was 12, but these are my memories of that amazing day so many years ago.

This experience is just one of a complex matrix of reasons why I became a Christian a few years later, and am a disciple of Jesus Christ to this day (see also: "Spiritual Biography"). Curious? Want to explore the possibilities of a life of seeking the mysterious, unpredictable, astonishing, and gracious center of all existence? Then come and see. Come experience the great fact that God is in love with us!
The Lord be with you,
Rick Laribee+