“All we can do is pray”

A wild ocean storm

​When all you can do is pray

After I graduated from University, I spent two years traveling around the world before returning to settle down to my first real full-time job.

In search of adventure at every opportunity, I found my way onto a small 42-foot private yacht sailing from New Caledonia, a French protectorate in the South Pacific, to Sydney, Australia.

Three days into the expected 10-day voyage, we hit a huge, wild, electric storm that lasted for 18 nerve-shredding, sleepless hours.

Our captain, Stan, an experienced 65-year-old yachtsman who lived full-time on his yacht, decided early on to pull in all the sail and "heave the boat to" so we could ride it out. And went to bed to sleep through the worst of it.

I, along with my friend and co-crew "Bushy," was too scared to sleep or even talk and made the mistake of sitting in the cockpit to watch incredible vortexes of lightning and pitching seas roll over the boat.

We were literally terrified out of our minds and became convinced we would be hit by lightning and probably sink.

A close strike

After one particularly close lightning strike, I volunteered to go below, wake Stan from his slumbers and ask if there was anything we could do to save ourselves in the event we were hit by the lightning or swamped by the waves.

Rousing him with an urgent tap on the shoulder, I asked, "Stan, what happens if we get hit by lightning? It's getting pretty wild up there."

Stan blinked up at me and replied, "Andy, if we get hit by lightning, it will destroy the boat."

"What can we do?!" I pleaded

"The only thing we can do is pray," was his unexpected (and frankly unwelcome) response. And with that, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

I clambered back up to the cockpit to relate the bad news to Bushy that with no practical, human solution to our predicament, Stan had advised us to pray.

No one has ever looked more hopeless to me than he did in that moment.

As strange as it seemed to us then, we did pray. Because that really was all we could do. Our prayer was far less faithful and far more self-serving than any of the prayers you'll copy in this season of Bible Copy Club.

But no less desperate, earnest, or needed.

The calm after the storm.

I can't claim any miraculous intervention or sudden epiphany. Praying felt awkward and embarrassing, even in those extreme circumstances. But the disturbing effect of that experience never left me.

I wasn't a Christian then. I was, at best, agnostic, but finding that when push really came to shove, prayer was all I had and all I needed irrevocably reset the spiritual table for me.

It would be years before I came to Christ, but a first irreversible step was taken that night.