One of the more diverse words in the English language is anchor – far more usages than the obvious usage in reference to a boat or ship. An anchor can also be a lead newscaster giving the daily news, and it can be a large department store that attracts shoppers to a shopping center or mall. It can be the final team member to participate in a relay race. An anchor can be something that provides reliable or principal support – like a football player can be the anchor of his team’s offensive line. Anchors are found in construction and maintenance holding an object firmly in place such as a nut and bolt cable anchor. Anchors can be a fixed object, like a tree or rock, that is used by mountain climbers to keep themselves safe. What do these anchors have in common? Each reflects, in some way or another, a level of strength, stability, security, endurance, dependability, and confidence.
Yet, there is one additional usage of anchor. It’s that something or someone in a person’s life that provides them strength, stability, security, endurance, dependability, and confidence as they navigate especially difficult parts of their life’s journey. To give this kind of anchor a name, we can call them life anchors. A life anchor is anything or anyone we count on to hold our lives steady and provide a safe haven during storms that threaten to take us out. Life anchors invoke courage to stay the course and not give in. Life anchors generate hope – that hybrid mindset of thinking and feeling characterized by confidence regarding something in the future for which there is no evidence in the present. Life anchors are essential for us to have a healthy life mentally and emotionally.
As I reflected on the role of anchors in our lives, I decided to do some reading about boat anchors. What I found were several things that correlate to life anchors. First, I took note that there are actually two main functions that a boat anchor fulfills. In my limited knowledge of boat anchors, I thought of an anchor as having one main function – holding a boat or ship in a desired location for safety or access. But I learned there is a second. The second function is called kedging. If I understand it correctly, kedging occurs when the anchor is used to move the boat or ship to a more desirable location. The anchor is thrown towards the new direction and is hauled in after it settles, moving the boat or ship to or towards the desired location. That means an anchor can be used to keep a boat or ship from drifting away from a desired location, or an anchor can also be used to draw a boat or ship to a safer or more desirable location.
When you think about it, that’s also the two main ways we depend upon our life anchors. Sometimes we need a life anchor to hold us in place, to help keep us from going off track – especially when life gets uncertain during times of grief, or worries and concerns about such things as finances, failed relationships, and lack of direction. On other occasions we call on a life anchor to help reposition us – having concluded that somewhere else is where we need to be. We call upon them for wise counsel and emotional support to help us determine that we even need to move, let alone that we’re making the right move. That’s why it is so important that the life anchors we put in place possess a second quality good anchors have. Boat anchors need holding power and so do life anchors. Holding power refers to a boat anchor’s ability to hold a boat where it is initially anchored. In a similar way, our life anchors need to have holding power based on strength, wisdom, and willingness to speak truth in love – even when doing so makes us uncomfortable. Boat anchors also need to be able to reset – meaning that when the wind shifts and the anchor is dislodged, it must be able to reset itself on the bottom ASAP. Life anchors need to be able to help us reset when our life pulls us loose.
Let me ask a few questions that are worthy of contemplation. Who or what are your life anchors? There are many vying for that title: possessions, pursuit of power, position and rank, a grudge and desire for revenge, a personal relationship, a promise we cling to made by someone we trust, a life philosophy composed of our core beliefs, convictions, and components of our worldview – to name just a few. Where are your life anchors holding you, or to what other location are they attempting to pull you? Can you honestly say the anchors are holding you in a good place? Or do you need to kedge and cast your anchor in a different spot?
I want to close with one final question. Who or what is your life anchor regarding the inevitability that one day you will die? After all, there are multiple applicants for the position. Only one life anchor is capable of delivering the genuine hope necessary for you to look death in the eye and never blink. Only one life anchor can deliver the confident assurance that the cost for you getting into heaven has been paid in full through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son Jesus. Those who have genuine hope regarding life after death are they who make God their life anchor. That hope comes through their belief in God’s promise that heaven is a real place, a perfect place, a beautiful place, and a safe place where death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more. That hope is rooted in their belief in the truth Jesus taught in John 14:6 – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the LIfe. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” No better life anchor exists.
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