Pedal Boats

Ah, the perennial summertime siren's call of pedal boats.

They look so cheery and inviting sitting there, lined up so colorfully at the dock, or floating placidly in the middle of the lake powered by someone else's legs.

In any case, I found myself pedaling a boat with my oldest son and was quickly reminded of how it feels to be going nowhere fast with much effort. Eventually we got going and my son took charge of the steering stick.

“This is great!” he exclaimed.

“What's great?” I asked. “Being in control of your own boat?” That was it exactly.

A few minutes later, the exclamation was more along the lines of, “Hey, this thing isn't steering!” Turns out you actually need to be pedaling for the steering to work. And that both over-steering and under-steering take you to places you don't really want to go. And then after making slow, hard progress across the lake, it was more like, “This is hard work.” Maybe even the suggestion that the results weren't quite worth the effort.

But we kept on, visiting shores we couldn't on foot and meeting up with other family members in matching pedal boats. And then we discovered that if we put our feet up and took our hands off the steering stick, we indeed would go nowhere fast and that was exactly what we wanted. It was lovely to sit and float in the middle of the lake, a slight breeze moving us languidly towards the shore.

What struck me was that each of those exclamations was true – at the time. It is great to be in charge of one's own boat; it is hard work; the boat won't steer if there's no pedaling; working hard causes the boat to go in endless circles – or to a shore one wants to explore; sometimes it is nice to not go anywhere in particular. And it made me wonder if the same could be said of life in general. That some things are true at a particular time, but then aren't true at a later time. That maybe at one point in a person's life one dearly wants to be going somewhere and then at a different point doesn't want to go there at all, or even move. And does changing one's mind or priorities necessarily constitute failure? Or is it just the inevitable change that forms a person's life? And what if a person only knows where she doesn't want to go, but not where she does? What then? It's almost like a pedal boat going in circles.

After 15 minutes, which seemed more like an hour, we were ready to be done pedal boating. We got to shore, switched boat-mates, and headed out on canoes, which is different kind of work and satisfaction altogether.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to

prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

                                                            Jeremiah 29:11