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Boat Parade, Dana Point, California, December, 2008
Steps to Obedience
Boat parades are a favorite Christmas tradition in waterfront communities. Participants spend days decorating their vessels with Christmas lights, Santas, stars and crosses. Skippers host parties aboard their boats, welcoming guests to enjoy the spectacle while enjoying food and drink. Boatloads of spectators line the edges of the parade channel to take in the festivities. Landlubbers bundle up and watch the parade from the shoreline.
In Villa Park, California, residents decorate their boats and tow them through the city streets on trailers. Lacking a harbor or lake, the people of that community found a novel way to enjoy the fun of a boat parade on dry land.
I think of Villa Park’s boat parade when I’m called to do something that seems to be beyond my abilities.
Say, for example, I’m feeling that insistent tug to care for orphans. While we’re not positioned to adopt a child at this stage of our lives, I can still obey. God will never ask me to do something that He hasn’t equipped me to do. I could mentor a girl living in an orphanage or sponsor an orphan in a faraway land.
If the good people of Villa Park can find a way to stage a boat parade without a harbor, I can find a way to obey my God when He calls on me.
33 Teach me Your decrees, O Lord;
I will keep them to the end.
34 Give me understanding and I will obey Your instructions;
I will put them into practice with all my heart.
35 Make me walk along the path of Your commands,
for that is where my happiness is found.Psalm 119:33-35 (NLT)
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