Calm Singing on a Sinking Ship

On January 25, 1736, a violent storm tore across the Atlantic and slammed into the small ship carrying John Wesley toward the colony of Georgia. Waves crashed over the deck. The mainsail split apart. Water poured into the hold. English passengers screamed. Wesley, an ordained Anglican minister, gripped the rail and felt raw terror flood his chest.

But below deck, a group of Moravian Christians — German refugees who had lost nearly everything to persecution — did something Wesley could not comprehend. They sang. Men, women, and children lifted a hymn together while the ocean roared and the timbers groaned. Not one of them flinched.

When the storm passed, Wesley approached their leader and asked, "Were you not afraid?" The man smiled gently. "No. Our women and children are not afraid to die."

Wesley later wrote in his journal that he realized these simple believers possessed something he, for all his Oxford training and religious discipline, did not: an unshakeable confidence that the Almighty held them, even when the mountains fell into the heart of the sea.

The Moravians had discovered what the psalmist declared — that when God is within His people, they will not fall. The waters may roar and foam. The nations may rage. But the Most High speaks, and even the storm knows its Master. That is why we will not fear.