Within a Stone’s Throw

“He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” — Psalm 107:29 (ESV)

On the 19th of September 1853, Taylor finally sailed for China aboard the Dumfries. His mother had come to see him off, smoothed the little bed in his cabin with her own hands, prayed with him one last time, and gone ashore. As the ship passed through the dock gates and the real parting began, Taylor heard a cry of anguish torn out of her. He said later he never understood the words “God so loved the world” until that moment — watching what love costs when you let go of someone for the sake of others.

The voyage nearly ended almost before it began. They had barely left port when a violent gale caught them, and for twelve days they were flung back and forth in the Irish Channel, unable to reach open sea. The storm kept building. By Sunday night the ship was being driven straight toward the rocks of Carnarvon Bay, each turn bringing them closer, until they were within a stone’s throw of the shore. The Christian captain turned to the young missionary and said the thing everyone was thinking: “We cannot live half an hour now. What of your call to labour for the Lord in China?”

It is a brutal question — your whole faith, your whole future, tested against a wall of rock in the dark. And Taylor’s answer was not bravado. He said he would not, for anything, be in any other position; that he still expected to reach China, but that if not, at least the Master would say it was well that he had died trying to obey. A few minutes later, after the ship was turned, the captain came back to the compass and said, “The wind has freed two points; we shall be able to beat out of the bay.” And they did. The ship was strained and damaged, but it lived.

Now here is the honest, uncomfortable part Taylor insisted on telling — and it is the reason this chapter is not just an adventure story. Before the voyage, to please his mother, he had bought a swimming-belt. But he had talked himself into a strange idea: that he could not really trust God while he owned a life-saving device. So on that terrible night, once all hope seemed gone, he gave the belt away — and then, oddly, gathered up some light objects likely to float, without noticing the contradiction. Later, studying the Bible carefully, he decided the whole thing had been a mistake. Real faith does not mean throwing away the help God provides. For years afterward he carried a swimming-belt with no trouble at all.

Read that twice, because a lot of sincere young Christians get this exactly wrong. Taylor thought spirituality meant refusing the ordinary means of safety — as if trusting God and using a life-belt were rivals. They are not. Using the means God gives is not a failure of faith; neglecting them is not a proof of it. The same God who calms the storm is the God who invented the swimming-belt.

You will meet a version of this. It shows up as the idea that “really trusting God” means not studying for the exam, not seeing the doctor, not making a plan — just praying and leaving it. That is not faith; it is a superstition that dresses up as faith and then blames God when it fails. Taylor learned the difference the hard way, in the dark, off the rocks. Trust God completely and use everything he has put in your hand. The two were never enemies.

One thing to do: find the place where you have been treating faith and effort as opposites — the subject you are “trusting God” with instead of preparing for, the problem you are praying about instead of acting on — and this week do both at once. Pray hard, and pick up the swimming-belt. Taylor eventually saw there was never any conflict.