That’s him.
Sam Hill. He was a real person, was a mover and shaker in helping create The Pacific Highway; built a home overlooking the Columbia River Gorge known as Maryhill; had 10 miles of paved road built on the grounds; and even had a replica of Stonehenge constructed there.
I know. You’re wondering why that’s important.
I included it because more than one of you just read today’s headline title and thought to yourselves, “What in Sam Hill do pirates have to do with Quiet Time Musings?”
I trust you. You’ll make the connection.
Proverbs 20:5 says it: “Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within.”
That got the creative juices flowing! I began free writing and here’s the result.
Don’t live down to anyone’s expectations. Get out there and amaze ’em! Overdo! Plow right through their small-thinking, self-imposed barriers of mediocrity!
Living the prayers you pray on your feet has great impact and is more important than saying them on your knees.
Blast straight through their comfortable no-goal, pathetic little worlds of studied incompetence and lack of desire to do anything other than just get by! Don’t even hesitate because of their lack of desire to be anything other than a passionless, mindless drone, forever doing someone else’s bidding.
Keep drawing from the well within your heart! Keep pouring out before you the goals and dreams God has placed there to draw you out of yourself; the desire to cast off from the dock, let your ship’s sails fill with Destiny’s winds and get out there and GO someplace worth seeing! DO something worth its effort! BE someone of whom God can be proud and say, “Look, me buckos! Thar goes a MAN to be reckoned with! Thar be a WOMAN worth followin’!”
Two things and I’m done.
- The pirate’s favorite letter of the alphabet? Oh, c’mon–you know this.
- No. I don’t know for sure whether God calls any of us “buckos” or not.
But I’m sure He’s pleased when we have courage to untie our lives from the shallow end of the pool, take Him at His Word and get out there and do something that exercises the faith we claim to have in Him.
There’s much more to your witness for Christ than merely showing up at church with your Bible. Living the prayers you pray on your feet has great impact and is more important than saying them on your knees. As a young man, Billy Graham said, “God, let me do something – anything – for You.”
To my knowledge, Billy Graham never played ‘Pirates’. But he proved the value of casting off from safety and comfort, and getting out there where something of worth beyond just this life can be accomplished.
© D. Dean Boone, May 2015