Big Barnacles. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Megabalanus coccopoma. It’s a barnacle. A big barnacle. Native to the seas off the Pacific coast, from southern California to South America, this bulky crustacean was recently discovered invading the ports of Charleston. Sam Crickenberger, a student at the College of Charleston, found it.
Bob WeathersBut then, it’s hard to miss. This invader grows fast and spreads rapidly. It has sunken navigational buoys, clogged coastal water pipes, and slowed ships to a sluggish crawl. “This guy could cause a lot of problems just due to his size alone,” Crickenberger explained.
Larry Smith is no stranger to barnacles in the Charleston port. He cleans hulls. He predicted that the people who will most suffer from the Megabalanus monster are those who fail to properly maintain their boats. If they don’t address this critter through proper maintenance, he said, they “aren’t going to be able to move.”
But that’s no surprise. Proper maintenance is almost always the key to eliminating troubling, bulky intruders that prevent effective, forward motion. On a ship’s hull, and on a human life, too. Taking care of ourselves – physically, spiritually, and emotionally – keeps us focused, alive, and cutting through the currents as God intended us to.
God designed you for a journey, to live a life of purpose for His glory. However, that journey becomes cumbersome and distracted and sluggish when we allow barnacles to get attached to our lives due to our own poor maintenance. If we fail to maintain our lives as we should, we find ourselves suffering from sin, lack of prayer, lack of time with family, lack of Bible study, and lack of personal care – to name a few. Soon more barnacles join the big ones: frustration, lost passion, emptiness, bitterness, broken relationships, and that general feeling of being pulled in a thousand directions.
So as you turn the corner into 2007, examine your life for the barnacles that prevent you from having an impact for Christ. Clean up, then resolve to maintain a lifestyle that will help you sustain your course on a long, productive journey.
And don’t forget to take Paul’s advice: “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead” (Phil. 3:13).
Welcome to 2007.