The Kingdom and the World.

1 Cor 10: 20-22.

Recently I read Tom Clancy's book "Submarine" A guided tour inside a nuclear warship. It occurred to me that there is a parable in there for the follower of Jesus Christ. Here is a place where people leave the world and enter a way of life in order to complete the mission assigned them. Here submariners exist for months on end without that which we would regard as our references in life.

These men leave the world, its dimensions and diversity, and are enclosed in a ten metre cylinder where a personal space is impossible. A nuclear sub is a cramped tube of steel the length of a football field packed with more than a hundred men in close proximity to potentially devastating radiation and superpower explosive warheads. They are well fed but have limited space to work out. Somehow these men manage to knit together to form a formidable fighting machine with a single focus.

We can learn from this as a church. We have an enemy and we have a mission. We have such a compact space to exist in yet a vast ocean to work in. We are blinded to the things of the world yet our ears are so finely tuned to the vast environment around us. They utilise their sonar, have become dolphin-like in their echolocation, practising their skills that will save them in the war against the enemy. Practised we must also be.

It is amazing to me that fighting men so pumped up with testosterone an live in such close conditions, often rotating the use of two bunks, stacked like coffins three high, between three men. Sharing one washer and a dryer between one hundred and thirty. A kitchen the size of an apartments feeding half the crew at a time. So how do they do it so successfully?

Firstly they know what they are there for and the Navy keep them busy. They man their stations for six hours then split the next twelve hours between sleep, drills and study. They have no time to think about the things that would get them down. They get one forty-word cable a month, never one bearing bad news. They are continually working towards their advancement in the position. Promotion is their goals and their likelihood.

Where are we then? How are our listening skills? How in tune are we to the environment around us? Dare I say that we are not so practised, not so good at our job. Our eyes are challenged by the confinement around us. Our ears strain to hear. Can we perceive the spiritual realms we are immersed in?