The Small Boat That Crossed the Deadliest Sea

In April 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton stood on the frozen shore of Elephant Island, Antarctica, facing an impossible choice. Twenty-two of his men were stranded, slowly starving, with no hope of rescue. The only way to save them was to cross eight hundred miles of the Drake Passage — the most treacherous stretch of ocean on earth — in a twenty-two-foot lifeboat called the James Caird.

For sixteen days, Shackleton and five companions battled waves that rose forty feet high. Ice coated the boat so heavily they had to chip it away by hand to keep from capsizing. They navigated by brief glimpses of stars through storm clouds. By every reasonable measure, the voyage should have killed them.

But Shackleton made it through. He reached South Georgia Island, crossed its unmapped mountains on foot, and returned with a rescue ship. Every single man on Elephant Island was brought home alive.

Peter tells us that Christ suffered once for sins, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. He passed through the waters of death itself — not in a fragile lifeboat, but in a borrowed tomb — and emerged alive on the other side. Like those stranded men who could do nothing but wait and trust, we cannot rescue ourselves. But the One who went through death and came out victorious now sits at the right hand of the Almighty, and He has come back for us.