The Great Awakening - Webpage of Michael Sharp

Imagine for a moment the vast ocean.

Clear and blue.

Crystal and calm.

Imagine yourself gazing out upon this ocean of vast stillness.

Breathing deeply, you are calm and serene as you watch the waves roll across the surface.

For a time, you gaze, watching, breathing, but then, suddenly you see a speck on the horizon.

You breathe deeply, excited by the vision, and watch as the speck rolls its way towards you.

It comes from a long distance.

It takes time rolling on the waves.

It draws towards you leisurely but soon the outline becomes clear and you see that it is an ocean liner, a passenger ship, steaming towards you.

And not just any passenger ship.

Even from this distance you are getting a hint of it magnificence.

The curve of the hull.

The silhouette of the multiple smoke stacks.

It is still a distance away but it must be magnificent, you think. As it draws up along side you think, “such a grand and magnificent ocean liner.”

But then, it gets close enough for you to make out the details and that’s when you startle.

There’s something wrong here.

This ship is far from magnificent.

It is decrepit.

It is rusted.

It is run down.

Dilapidated.

As your eyes pass over it, you are shocked at its condition.

It is banged up, crusted with gunk, and rusted so bad that holes are appearing in the hull.

“It’s so bad,” you think to yourself, “that it must be sinking” and sure enough, as eyes dart to the water line you notice, the ship is going down.

Now it’s at this point that your original excitement evaporates and fear begins to overtake you.

With a feeling of grave danger in your chest you wonder, “are there any people on this ship” and sure enough, when you look at the deck, there’s people.

“At least ten thousand,” you think. “Maybe many more.”

And your heart skips a beat.

You wonder how they are handling their sinking ship, so you focus on their faces and become confused.

“They’re smiling.”

“They’re laughing.”

“They’re are eating.”

“They’re drinking.”

“Hell, these people are having a party,” exclaim, shocked.

“This can’t to true.”

“Can they not see their ship is sinking?”

“Do they not care they will drown in the ocean?”

You squint at the deck and then, your heart quakes with fear.

There are children on the deck.

And lots of them.

“Oh my god,” you say as your consciousness leaps ahead four hours to when the ship sinks and the children drown.

The thought of what’s happening here brings tears to your eyes.

You cough and choke.

You brace yourself for the end but then, that’s when you notice, for the first time, another ship following not far behind.

You take a deep breathe.

“Could it be?” you say.

“Is there hope?”

You turn your gaze to the new ship and you see, from it’s silhouette, that it looks much like this old. For a moment you die as you think that perhaps this new ship you see is in the same condition as the old; but as it approaches rapidly, you see it is not like the first ship at all.

On the contrary, this ship is shiny, bedazzling, and new.

Glorious and white with brilliant elaborate gold trim.

“How wondrous,” you think, “and lucky for those on board.” Your gaze travels to the deck where you expect to see thousands of people but you find no one.

You peer into the portholes.

You scan down the hallways.

“Curious, ” you think.

“Who is steering the ship?”

Your eyes scan forward for the bridge of the new ship and when you find it, you peer inside and sure enough there’s a helmsmen, a captain, and a few others. But besides this small crew, there appears to be nobody else on the ship.

“Curious, but fortunate,” you think, as the clawing fear begins to evaporate from your body.

Here is another ship that is big enough to accommodate all the passengers of the old ship in splendor and luxury. And what’s even better, the captain of the new ship seems fully apprised of the situation. As you peer into the bridge you can see he is gesticulating wildly, pointing at the old ship in front of him, and giving orders to those around him.

Your relief grows as suddenly, the gesticulating captain bolts out of the bridge and down onto the deck below with megaphone in one hand and a flair gun in the other. He runs forward to tip of the ship, waits until the ships get as close as possible, and then begins firing his flair gun. The revelers don’t notice right away so the captain keeps firing flares until finally, a few standing in the stern of the old ship raise their eyes to see what’s going on and that’s when their eyes widen with surprise.

“There’s another ship,” they exclaim. They jump and wave in greeting and watch the captain jump around. Most of them turn back to the party right away but a couple of them sense the captains agitation. They break away from the group and walk towards the railing. When they get their they see the pointing frantically at the of their ship.

They look down.

Their eyes widen in horror.

Like people waking up from a dream in a house that’s on fire, they finally see the danger.

Their ship is sinking and if they don’t do something right now, they are going to die.

They look at each other, fighting the panic that threatens to overwhelm their reason.

They take a few deep breaths.

They quickly assess the situation.

“There’re lifeboats on this ship, and there’s another ship close by,” they think.

“Everything it going to be ok,” they think.

“We just have to find the captain!” they shout at each as they bolt towards the front of the ship. They run as fast as they can up and as forward until finally bursting through the bridge doors to find, to their utter horror, an empty room.

There mouths drop to the floor.

“Where’s the captain?” they gasp.

“Where’s the crew?”

They pause for a few moments, turning in dazed circles, before they stop, look at each other, and bolt out of the room.

“We have to find the captain,” they exclaim as dash down towards the front of the ship. Thankfully, it doesn’t take them long. After only a few moments of search, they find the captain lounging around at the bow of the boat, surrounded by a big ground.

They run up.

They try and talk with him.

They notice he’s drunk.

They begin slapping him.

He struggles under the blows, briefly, and then stands up abruptly.

“What is the meaning of this,” he bellows.

The two who were hitting him point to the railing.

In disgust the captain walks over to the railing, sees the new ship, looks at her captain, looks at his hull, and quietly turn pale as a ghost. He looks over the captain who is already running back to his own bridge to stop the ship. The captain of the old ship understands immediately. He turns to the other two and says “we can’t use the lifeboats unless we stop the ship.” You see all three of them bold back to the bridge where the captain grabs the throttle, bringing the ship all ahead stop.

They stand there for a moment, waiting to be sure the ship is slowing, then they all run to the nearest lifeboat and begin tugging at the people around it.

“Wake up!” they say, “the ship is sinking.”

“Wake up!”

“Wake up!”

“Wake up!” they begin to scream as they start shaking people’s shoulders.

You can see why they are getting agitated.

The people aren’t listening.

They are too busy with the party.

And the more the three try, the harder it seems to be.

It’s like people don’t want to hear it.

“Get lost,” they are told, as they are shoved away by the more aggressive ones.

But they don’t give.

They don’t trying.

How can they?

The ship is sinking!

And besides, they can see that the captain of the newer ship has already stopped his vessel and has lowered all his lifeboats.

If they can just get these people to wake up, everything will be ok.

And so, they keep trying.

Desperately they run from group to group attempting to get people to notice.

They grow weary of pushing through crowds, but they stick at it and they make progress.

Some people do wake, but not many, and their reaction is predictable. When they finally see the state of their ship, and lacking the disciplined self-control of a navel captain, they start to panic.

Their faces turn white.

Some cry out.

Some grasp at their families.

Some begin weeping and some lose control.

But in most cases, it doesn’t last long. The captain is standing there reassuring, pointing to the life boats, and saying to them “there’s enough time”

And

“Everything is going to be ok

And they believe him because they see the new ship and all the lifeboats.

They’re scared.

They know there’s danger, but they are calm, and some of them begin to move towards the lifeboats.

But others don’t.

In fact you can see, most don’t.

Most stay behind.

Even though they have the opportunity to get into a lifeboat, most stay to help.

They have family.

They have friends.

They have a responsibility and they want to help, and that’s great because there are thousands upon thousands of people on this ship who need to wake up right now. And so, the original two, multiply. First ten, then a hundred, and then a thousand busy hands and voices shaking shoulders and slapping faces.

But it’s slow going, and people resist, even lash out.

But still, the work goes doggedly on until…

“It” happens.

The deck of the ship is now water level.

The bow of the boat dips gently below the waves and water comes splashing up onto the deck, and when that happens, things change dramatically.

Like a little emotional atom bomb suddenly pushed into chain reaction, the sudden and almost global realization of imminent disaster sends energetic ripples cascading throughout the ship.

The ship literally explodes with fear.

Standing back from ship you can sense how momentous it is.

The energy from the fear is raw and potent, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

Sheer raw power and you are certain, as the raw energy of this blasts past you, that it will spell doom for those on the ship.

There will be mass panic.

Once again you look over at the ship expecting to see chaos, but are surprised to find none. You ask yourself, “how can this be?” and then you see the reason. Not only do lifeboats from the new ship totally surround the sinking old ship, but no sooner do people wake up and panic than there is somebody there to calm them and direct them to the nearest boat. You can feel the energetic ripple of fear, but the energy never manifests into the descending spiral of panic and chaos that you expect. Conditions, from the ubiquitous lifeboats to the kind hearted individuals who staid behind, ensure that almost all passengers of the old boat are safely transported to the new.

And so, the drama ends, the last of the survivors are lifted, thankfully, to the new ship. As the survivors stand on the deck watching their derelict ship sink beneath the waves, there is serenity, joy, and sadness. The ordeal is over and a new world lies before them.

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