What Do You Do Here?

“What do you do here?” it is a story that teaches us about how we should pay attention to our companions.

A young man decided to participate in a race that began with a swimming test of almost two miles in the sea. Six hundred people gathered on the beach at sunrise, some hoping to win a medal. The young man hoped to finish before dinner.

Six orange buoys marked the path. Fellow runners told him the secret to staying on the right path: every four or five strokes, lift your head out of the water and head in the right direction. The last thing you want to do is get off track and have to swim an extra distance to get back. It sounded simple. He had already practiced the “stand up and look” technique to exhaustion in the pool. But not in the wind-tossed sea.

And there was still the wind. Everyone swallowed hard when they saw the flag up there all stretched out, and the winds blowing stronger. Gusts of wind made the sea in the bay look like a mountain range of salty waters. And what was worse, the wind was blowing to the south. They would swim north. “No problem,” he told himself to reassure himself. “And just swim from one buoy to another.”

After a few minutes, the tactic of swimming from “one buoy to another” turned into despair. Every time he got up and looked, all he saw was the next wave. It was a disaster. It looked like he was swimming in circles.

Then suddenly help came swimming to him. About six competitors made him their bridge body. First, he got angry. Then he thought: “They know where they are going, I’m going after them.” So much easier. No looking for markers in the waves; just stay with the group. And that’s what he did. They glided across the bay with the confidence of a pod of dolphins, checking their companions’ direction every ten minutes, each stroke bringing them closer to the end. But suddenly his hand hit the lifeboat.

He stopped and looked at one of the judges. One by one, his new running mates came and rammed him or the boat. Pileup at sea.

“…Blind guides is what they are. If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“What do you do here? Where are you going?” asked the guy in the boat. For the first time in a while, he looked around. They were at least a quarter of a mile off course, well on their way to China. They looked at each other. No one said anything, but he knew what everyone thought. Well, he knew what he had thought. “I thought you knew where you were going.”

There were so many swimmers that they couldn’t all be wrong, could they? Yes, they could. A little frustrated and a lot embarrassed, they turned towards the beach and joined the event again.

Have you ever had days like this? Days when you suddenly realize you are miles out of your way? God sends a rescue boat on days like this, however, to realize the boat, you need to keep your Bible reading up to date and strive not to fall into the desires of the world.

Just because the majority goes one way does not mean it is the right one. We see this in the world today, but we need to “swim” against the majority if we want to stay in Jehovah’s ways.

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