Everyone thinks Jack Sparrow’s compass is broken. It doesn’t point north.
At one point, Jack instructs his crew to set sail “in a… general… that-a-way… direction”. When the crew asks for something a little more definite, Captain Jack responds: “I have every faith in your reconciliatory navigational skills”. And so they set off, albeit with a bit of uncertainty. They’re guardedly optimistic that he’ll lead them safely to their goal, because he’s never let them down before. And so off they go, “in a… general… that-a-way… direction”.
More often than not, that’s how God works. God gives us a heading, “in a… general… that-a-way… direction”. We’d like something clearer, but God just smiles, because he has every faith in our reconciliatory navigational skills. But off we go, perhaps with our own bit of uncertainty, counting on the fact that God has never let us down before.
Now, back to the compass. It’s not really broken, you know. Just because it doesn’t point north, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It is actually quite precise. It points to what the bearer wants most.
God provides us much the same kind of compass. It doesn’t always point where we think it should. But it points exactly where he wants it to. Admittedly, it doesn’t chart the course for us. It doesn’t tell us what conditions we will encounter. It doesn’t tell us if we’ll have to alter our course at some point and then recalculate. But then, neither does any other compass.
With an ordinary compass, you have to make estimates. You make educated guesses as to where you will find the true destination. Not so with Jack’s compass. Not so with God’s compass. If we’re sailing faithful to God, our compass will take us exactly where we want to go and exactly where God wants us to end up.
We’re heading off, in a general that-a-way direction, with a compass that only points us to God’s intended destination.
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