Jan and I have traveled in all but two states, Minnesota and North Dakota. The desire to go to Minnesota and North Dakota was not vibrant until I saw a picture of the Split Rock Lighthouse.
Previously, the desire was muffled by the distance from home to there. Also factoring in the muffling was the mental picture of a region with a flat landscape, many lakes, and few citizens. Lastly, there is little in my memory of the history of Minnesota that attracted my curiosity.
After seeing the beautiful picture of the Split Rock Lighthouse, I began a search of its history. I was captured. The beautiful lighthouse picture was the lure, and its history was the hook. Today is July 1, 2023, and I am already in the mental preparation for a road trip to loop around the interior of both states. The hope is to get to take the adventure the first two weeks of this October. It will not likely be then, but If I don’t have an end date, the planning will continue until the cows come home.
The Split Rock Lighthouse was built on a 133-foot rock cliff on the USA north shore of the extreme west end of Lake Superior in 1910. The total cost of the lighthouse was seventy-five thousand dollars because there were no roads to the area, and all the building materials had to be delivered by boat. The necessity of the lighthouse was the infamous Mataafa Storm of 1905, during which 29 ships were lost or damaged on Lake Superior.
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was among the ships lost in that near-hurricane storm. The boat was an American Great Lakes freighter. In the Mataafa Storm, it was sent to the bottom, taking the entire twenty-nine-man crew. At the time, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes and still holds the distinction of being the largest to have ever sunk in the lakes.
Let me recap my journey, and it started with a picture of the Split Rock Lighthouse, which sent me to its history. That history sent me to the Matara Strom recount. In that reading, I came upon the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. While reading about the ship’s demise, I found a name I knew, Gordon Lightfoot. Yes, the singer.
He was a part of the folk-pop music of the 60s and 70″ s. He died on May 1 of 2023. Gordan was generally known as Canada’s greatest songwriter. In my generation, he is most known recordings are “If You Could Read My Mind” (1970), “Sundown” (1974), “Carefree Highway” (1974), “Rainy Day People” (1975), and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976).
As I read the account of the fierce storm, a faint familiarity surfaced when I read the ship’s name. I couldn’t quite place it until I was prompted by seeing Lightfoot’s name. His song was a poetic story of the sinking of the Fitzgerald. There is no repeating chorus. It’s all the retelling of the saga. You can hear a recording of the song on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0K6ojmGZA
The Thirty-third and thirty-fourth lines read:
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Now came to my mind a most perplexing question, where is God when the storm surges around me?
I find it interesting that in all my pastoral counseling, I have never been asked, “Where is God?” when life is smooth sailing. Could many of us have a “faith” built upon feelings of our well-being? We reason that if life is good, I must be pleasing God. Conversely, when life is painful, we assume God must punish us if he is looking our way.
Our confidence level in our God rises and falls with how life feels to us. The level of our anxiety in life directly demonstrates the depth of our knowledge of God. There is a huge difference between knowing about God and knowing the person of God.
Lately, I have wondered about the difference between believing in God and believing God. I have heard in recent years, many people proclaim their belief in God. They use that belief in God to build a fraudulent theology that justifies their beliefs about themselves. They confidently justify their pleasures and passions in their belief “in” God.
I know this is true because that is how I lived most of my life. And it didn’t work for me!
A new day slowly dawned as the Holy Spirit led me “by” the storms of my life to realize I did not believe God. I worked hard to learn about God but not to know Him as He wanted me to know Him.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Yes, I know ” where God’s love goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours.” He is in the storm as much as He is in the fair weather, ever drawing me closer and revealing His great love. I no longer believe the storms of life; I believe the life of the storm!
Psalm 42:10-11
My adversaries taunt me,
as if crushing my bones,
while all day long they say to me,
“Where is your God?”
Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God. (CSV)
Photo- This is the Split Rock Lighthouse photo on my laptop that caught my attention.
Baldwin Heirlooms 