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Friday 20 April 2012

The Uttermost Parts of the Sea


In my April 14th post, I told of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the amazing survival of his entire crew on an Antarctic expedition.  At the opposite point of the globe and about 60 years earlier, Sir John Franklin set out to find the Northwest Passage through the islands that dot North America’s polar regions.  Franklin and his team of adventurers, however, were all lost.  Although they have been credited with finding the Northwest Passage, they did not live to share this knowledge with others.
   Can there be a faith angle in a story like this?  John Franklin’s desire to explore was motivated by faith in the God of the Bible.  Where maps had previously denoted uncharted areas with words like “There be giants,” Franklin actually wrote, “There is God.”  To uncover these places that God had established and over which he ruled, Franklin set out.
   Funded mainly by John Franklin’s wife Jane, numerous expeditions were sent to find what had become of this devout man.  It is reported[1] that Psalm 139:9-10 was underlined in his Bible found on a ship.  In the King James Version, it reads, “ If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”
   Franklin’s expedition may have been doomed, but the God he held onto never abandoned him.  This is one of the mysteries of life.


[1] As told in On This Day in Christian History by Robert J. Morgan on the entry dated April 16.  According to Frozen in Time by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, a boat was found on Cape Crozier, on the western extreme of King William Island.  It contained six books, "including a Bible in which most of the verses were underlined" (page 86).

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