You may have read one of the many stories from the past week concerning the “endless cruise” on the high seas that has come to an abrupt and unhappy end. As I understand it, the MV Odyssey was a cruise ship that had been converted into something like a floating condominium development. Though there were many financing options, the basic plan allowed “owners” to buy a cabin for $300,000-$500,000. Buyers were told the cabin was theirs for life and depending on the plan, they paid some sort of monthly fee for meals and staff services and the like, and the ship sailed from port to port. Among the 500 or so passengers were many retirees and a few distance-workers. Having set sail from Belfast, Northern Ireland, in October 2024, the ship had fulfilled the first two years of its endless cruise promise. But then it literally ran out gas.

Blaming the high price of oil, the ship’s management says its business model no longer works and the ship is being repossessed by its mortgage holder.

The ship had made it to a port city in southern Cambodia when the fuel gauge hit E. The residents were given seven hours to pack up and disembark. From there they were on their own. Some have booked flights home and others are holed up in local hotels trying to decide what to do next. Whatever they decide, it seems that the endless cruise has come to an end.

It’s a sad story, but one wonders if there wasn’t a “too good to be true” element to the scheme from the beginning (if you had $15 million sitting around, a three-bedroom apartment on the MS World might have been a safer investment).

While hindsight may ask some of the endless cruisers what they were thinking whren they invested their life savings on a cruise without end, we should not be harsh in our questions. Hindsight is always more perceptive than foresight. More than that, the unexpected should be expected no matter how scrupulous our planning. The old poet was right, “the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.”

I may not book an endless cruise, but I may worry if my money will last, if my health will hold, if those reservations will be honored, if the plumber will come as he promised.

Five months before his death, Benjamin Franklin wrote a friend in France in regard to the newly ratified U.S. Constitution. Appropriate to this election week he said, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”  Point made. Certainty is not an abiding attribute of our world or our lives.

But in this world of doubt and discouragement, one thing is more certain than death and taxes or anything else.

The prophet Habakkuk end his otherwise gloomy oracle with words to soothe an uncertain heart:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.  Habakkuk 3:17–19

We don’t know when the cruise will end or what port will be its final docking place. But, as Habakkuk reminds us, when the fig tree does not blossom, when the crops fail, and the cattle stalls stand empty – even then we rejoice in the Lord who is our strength.

Blessed assurance!

Psalm 89:11–12

The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.
The north and the south, you have created them.

Becky and I spent a few days at the end of last week on the shore of Lake Michigan with our daughter and her family. It was a glorious time! We drank of the beauty of the earth and rested in the joy of human love – parent, grandparent, sisters, children, and grandchildren.

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. defines sin and its consequences as “not the way it is supposed to be.”  Those 48 hours on Lake Michigan in the glory of God’s creation and with the gift of family were a reminder of how things are supposed to be and how things someday will be.

The photos offer a glimpse of our experience – walking with family beneath a canopy of leaves splashed with the yellows and oranges of October, climbing a towering dune to look across this fifth largest lake in the world, one of the wonders of the created order. Belonging and beauty, serenity and sanctuary. The way it is supposed to be.

It was good to be away. Continue reading →

The first frost warning of the season came last week, and, sure enough, as we headed for church on Sunday, the front lawn was covered by a coat of icy crystals. With colder mornings headed our way, I’ve pulled out my long sleeve running shirt and my leggings along with a pair of warm gloves for my pre-dawn jogs. I will add another layer of clothing for the cold mornings of January, but this will do for now.

In fact, my winter weather gear is more for my comfort than for protection from anything too dangerous. My gloves keep my fingers from getting numb, but there is certainly no threat of something so severe as frost bite. When the morning temperatures drop to the mid-teens or below, I simply stay inside and sip coffee by a warm fire.

While I may not be an arctic explorer, I do appreciate the way a merino wool shirt and those cheap Amazon leggings keep my arms and legs warm on a frost-warning morning run.  Numb fingers are no fun, and the gloves do their job. Continue reading →

In the 26 years I have been posting Friday thoughts in one form or another, I am pretty sure this is the first time I have written about a roadkill. For everything there is a season…

I noticed the carcass at the side of the county road as I was making my way from our house into town. But it wasn’t the usual racoon or opossum. Its black fur with a white stripe gave it away immediately. “Poor Pepé Le Pew,” I thought as I drove by, and for a few seconds did not think much more about it.

Then it hit. 50 yards or so from the scene of the crime, that unmistakable aroma hit my nostrils, even though the car windows were up. In another 100 yards the stench receded. The roadkill’s olfactory assault had been far worse than its visual assault. Continue reading →

We received word earlier this week of Ann’s death. She was 98 years old. Our sorrow, then, is not so much in an untimely death as in the loss of someone so good.

Becky and I knew Ann together and separately. Ann and her family were friends in Becky’s growing up neighborhood and with Becky’s family members of First Presbyterian Church in Santa Cruz, California. Ann and her husband Bob served and led at the church and were perhaps my most important encouragers and mentors when I became Youth and Christian Education Director following my graduation from the university in that town. For both of us Ann and Bob modeled faith and service – a love for Christ and his church – as few others have.

On an evening walk after we heard of Ann’s death, Becky and I shared memories of Ann and her importance in our lives as the sun set golden behind the trees in the neighborhood. The stories and recollections are too many to list, but for both of us the word that best describes Ann is grace. There was a grace about Ann in the way she dressed and the way she spoke, but, more, a grace about her care and love for people, surely a grace reflecting the grace of the God she served all her life. Continue reading →