On Thursday, Feb. 7, more than 3,100 excited people departed from Galveston, Texas, aboard the Carnival cruise liner Triumph. It was to be a short cruise to Mexico and back.
WeathersBut after an engine room fire knocked out power, the crippled ship limped along in open water with no propulsion. Tugs were called in, lines attached, and the listing vessel and her captives were slowly pulled the 350 miles to a port in Alabama, arriving nearly a week after their departure from Texas – and becoming a cruise liner legend.
As the powerless vessel turtled along in the open sea, conditions rapidly deteriorated. Most disastrous were the loss of flushing toilets and the stench of spoiling food. The sewage and lack of air conditioning drove passengers to create tent cities on the open decks. And as passenger Wendell Gill, pastor of First Baptist Church in La Porte, Texas, described it, it became “a tale of two ships.”
Some passengers panicked. Drunken guests started fist fights and cursed loudly at one another. Others hoarded food. One passenger described scenes of people grabbing “boxes and boxes of cereal and grabbing cake with both hands.” A newlywed couple’s angry spat spilled into the public areas, and the new bride threatened to throw herself overboard. Passengers ignored the elderly and the sick and the children. That was one of the “two ships.”
But another group of passengers reacted differently. Same boat. Same disaster. Same horrible conditions. But these passengers banded together. They erected covering on the deck for the elderly and the sick, helping the disabled with chairs and stairs when needed. They shared food and water, prayed together regularly, comforted and helped with the scared children of total strangers, and greeted each other in the hallways, as friends who share a misery will often do. In short, they created community.
The image is so stark it scarcely needs interpreting. We could hardly find a better illustration for the difference the church should make. Misery shows what we are truly made of. And collective misery will either pull us together or tear us apart.
Under pressure, our priorities surface. “A new command I give to you,” Jesus said, “love one another” (John 13:34). Coming together in a crisis. That’s community.