And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.”
Acts 27:30-31
In order to convey the message that your work matters to God, we look for examples where the work of Biblical characters has significance. Here is one of those examples. This is from the story in Acts 27 about the storm that the ship carrying Paul to Rome encounters. What makes this storm story unusual is that there is no activity by God to calm or lessen the storm. They are caught in a life threatening storm for 14 days! It is hard to imagine enduring that level of hardship. And when they are “saved”, it is only after the ship breaks apart on a reef and they all float to shore on the debris. This is a much different resolution than with Jesus when “he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” (Mark 4:39)
In this story, there is a lot of detail about the activity of the sailors in battling the storm. We are told that they stow the ship-to-shore boat, put out stern anchors, undergird the ship with ropes to hold it together, and jettison cargo so that the ship rides higher on the sea.
When we come to verse 30, the ship is approaching land and the sailors realize that they have a much better chance of making it to land safely in the ship’s boat than on the ship. Paul tells the centurion that he must not allow the sailors to escape because they are necessary for everyone to be saved.
That does not seem right to me. Paul has been told through an angel that he and all aboard the ship will be saved. God can do anything, so He does not need the sailors. Yet Paul says that they are necessary. Their skill in seamanship is needed to guide the ship so that it is grounded at a place where everyone is able to make it to shore. Here is a picture of God’s purposes being fulfilled through the work of people who are not even disciples.
It is hard to accept that God’s promised outcome would not have happened without the vocational skill of these sailors. Human logic says that the sailors cannot be necessary, that God would have intervened and saved everyone even if the sailors had escaped. But that is not what Paul tells the Centurion. This story is saying that the vocational skill and work of the sailors was necessary and was therefore very significant. This adds a new wrinkle to the oft repeated refrain that God does not need our work or our efforts. While that may be true from a theology of God perspective, it is not true if God chooses to need our work and effort. And this story reveals that there are times when God chooses to need our work and our effort and that is one reason why our work matters to God.