An Act of Faith
Steaming in convoy at night was an exhausting experience in seamanship. To reduce the risk of submarine attack every ship had to make sure that no lights were showing. This made keeping station with the rest of the convoy an unremitting task of intense focus and eyestrain. If an escort ship were to lose position there was more than embarrassment involved. A dangerous gap could open in the defensive screen around the convoy that could let a submarine through. As if this was not challenging enough, the escorts often were required to follow a zigzag course to further thwart submarine attacks. In his classic,
The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat describes one young corvette officer’s experience with this maneuver:
A zigzag on a pitch-black night, with thirty ships in close contact adding the risk of collision to the difficulty of hanging on to the convoy, was something more than a few lines in a Fleet Order. Lockhart… evolved his own method. He took Compass Rose out obliquely from the convoy, for a set number of minutes: very soon, of course, he could not see the other ships, and might have had the whole Atlantic to himself, but that was part of the manoeuvre. Then he turned, and ran back the same number of minutes on the corresponding course inwards: at the end, he should be in touch with the convoy again, and in the same relative position.
It was an act of faith that continued to justify itself, but it was sometimes a little hard on the nerves.118
We live our lives with faith that the things we rely on every day will continue to work properly: a shipboard procedure, the automobile brakes, our relationships. Such faith is a matter of trust based on experience. The most vital part of our lives is of course our relationship with God, which we have entirely through faith. This faith is also based on experience and grows as we actively practice it. The more we seek him by praying and listening, the more we will feel his presence and grow in confidence that we are “on station,” even in the darkest and most uncertain waters.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
—Hebrews 11:1
