True North

As you walked in the church this morning you were probably caught by surprise at all of the preparations are being made for the Vacation Bible School that begins this Wednesday and lasts through next Saturday. This week will be a very busy and exciting week with a lot of visitors, both children and their parents, and if you want to come and help, you will be most welcomed. It would be great if everyone could come at some point to lend a helping hand, or just to greet the visitors.

I want to also acknowledge that we have help coming from other churches. A few of the youth from The Church International and Faith Fellowship will be here and we are grateful for their commitment to all the kids who come. We want to see kids and adults touched by the Love of God.

The theme of the VBS this year is “True North” and all of the decorations point to things from the northern outdoors such as mountains, waterfalls, mountain lakes, wilderness wildlife and camping. The natural surroundings are there to remind us of God’s beautiful creation. We see His handiwork in the earth, in seas and in the heavens, but as beautiful as these things are, the kids will learn that none of those things are what points us to the True North. The only way to find the True North is to follow Jesus and discover all the ways that we are able to find the way to eternal life.

The true meaning of “True North” is found in Jesus, who is our True North. Jesus Christ is the single focus point from which everything should radiate in our lives. He is The Ultimate Authority and the One who can guide every one of us through life with all of its good times, not-so-good times, and times that are completely chaotic.

Where does that term “True North” come from? In the ways of nature the true north isn’t always what we think it is. In times past sailors on the open seas, and often wanderers in the wilderness navigated and found their way through the use of a magnetic compass. It became obvious to many that compasses were not all that reliable for reaching their destination.

I have here a fairly reliable compass. It’s very similar to the type that we were issued in the military to try and navigate ourselves through the dense jungles in order to reach our destination. They aren’t nearly as easy to use and you might think and you always have to aware of holding them too close to anything metallic and magnetic such as a rifle or even things in your field pack.

I set it on due north while standing in the center of the office, but when I approached the metal filing cabinets it would interfere with the earth’s magnetic field and draw the needle as much as 10-15 degrees off of magnetic north. If you are trying to travel from here to New Orleans with that much deviation, you might end up in Slidell or Covington on one side, or Grand Isle or some point west of New Orleans.

Because of this deviation, In time sailors on the open ocean where there are no landmarks to reference, learned to navigate the trackless seas by focusing on the position of the North Star. Navigators who could sail a ship from Europe to America, or from America to the Far East were few and far between because most people had never studied astronomy and had even heard of the constellations.

If you ever wanted to find the right city across the ocean you dad to know where the North Star was and how to use what was called a Sextant to be able to calculate the right direction to sail You didn’t want to have sail for 3 months and more from England to discover that you had reached Cuba instead of New York.

The positioning of the North Star was determined when God placed the stars in the sky and gave them a name. We have studied the Constellations, and if you remember, every star has a name that serves the purpose of telling the story of the gospel in the very stars of the sky, so their positions in their constellations are fixed in order for men to see the Truth.

The North Star happens to be the only star in the sky that never changes in its position in the skies above the earth, even though the earth is moving, and the constellations are passing overhead in order every month and year, and over time some have moved farther north and others farther south over the horizon.

Through all of this movement the North Star has never moved it is position in the night sky, and it has been, and continues to be the only true reference point among the stars. Of course, with the development of Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), man has found a more reliable and easy to use method than the North Star.