The Storm That Became a Doorway

On March 10, 1748, a violent storm nearly swallowed the slave trading ship Greyhound in the North Atlantic. John Newton, a twenty-two-year-old sailor who had mocked God for years, woke to freezing water flooding his cabin. For eleven hours, he and the crew pumped water and plugged holes while waves tore the vessel apart. At one desperate moment, Newton found himself lashed to the deck, certain the sea would claim him. He cried out words he never expected to say: "Lord, have mercy on us."

The ship that should have been his coffin carried him through.

Peter tells us that Noah and his family were "saved through water" — the very floodwaters that brought judgment on the world became the means by which eight people were carried safely to a new beginning. The water did not spare them from the storm. It bore them through it. And Peter says baptism works the same way — not as a ritual washing of the body, but as an appeal to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Righteous One who suffered for the unrighteous to bring us to the Almighty.

Newton spent the rest of his life testifying that the storm he deserved became the passage God used to reach him. The same waters that threatened death carried him into life. Christ went through death itself — and came out the other side alive — so that we, like Noah's household, might pass through judgment and find ourselves, astonishingly, safe on the other side.