The Fog

The following story is offered on Answers.com:

On July 4, 1952, at the age of 34, [Florence] Chadwick attempted to become the first woman to swim 21 miles across the Catalina Channel, from Catalina Island to Palos Verde on the California coast. The weather that day was not auspicious-the ocean was ice cold, the fog was so thick that she could hardly see the support boats that followed her, and sharks prowled around her. Several times, her support crew used rifles to drive away the sharks. While Americans watched on television, she swam for hours. Her mother and her trainer, who were in one of the support boats, encouraged her to keep going. However, after 15 hours and 55 minutes, with only a half mile to go, she felt that she couldn't go on, and asked to be taken out of the water.

Brian Cavanaugh, in A Fresh Packet of Sower's Seeds, noted that she told a reporter, "Look, I'm not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I know I could have made it." The fog had made her unable to see her goal, and it had felt to her like she was getting nowhere.

I think, sometimes, we do the same thing when it comes to the pressures of life. Jesus says we allow the worries of this world to choke out our view of Jesus. As one writer has noted, perhaps we should take a page out of Paul’s book and not allow anything to take our eyes off Jesus.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Phil. 2:12).

By the way, two months later, Florence Chadwick swam the channel.