Well if you have been reading Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson, then maybe pages 90-91 caught your eye as it did mine.

On the edge of medieval maps, cartographers used to inscribe the Latin phrase terra incongnita Naysayers and doomsdayers believed that if you ventured too far into unknown territory, you would either fall off the edge of the flat earth or run into two-headed dragons.  But that didn’t keep a few brave souls from venturing into unchartered waters.

Columbus was actually trying to find a westward route to the Indies, something many experts assumed was impossible.  But Columbus challenged the assumption and embarked on a Wild Goose chase.  Columbus was no saint.  In his own diary, he confessed: “I am the most unworthy sinner.”  But Columbus also stated that it wasn’t intelligence, mathematics, or maps that made his voyage a success.  Columbus credited the Holy Spirit with the idea.  “It was the Lord who put it into my mind, (I could feel his hand upon me), the fact that it would would be possible to sail from here to the Indies.  All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter riduculing me.  There is no question that the inspiration  was from the Holy Spirit, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures.” (Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light of Glory p.17)

Here is what impresses me the most about Columbus’s voyage: not one crew member had ever been more than three hundred miles offshore! 

In the words of Andre` Gide, “People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Do these words affect you?  Join the conversation!