I recently read a news story about life aboard one of Britain’s nuclear submarines. The writer, himself a former captain of Britain’s HMS Turbulent, shared insights into a life few will ever know or can truly comprehend: Away from home for nearly a full year and almost entirely cut off from the outside world, living and lurking silently in the ocean depths in tight quarters with 129 other souls. No sunlight. No difference between daytime and nighttime, just continuous rotations of six-hour shifts; six on, six off. The unpleasant smell of body odor and the lack of personal space just come with the cramped territory. Everyone aboard is far more focused on the international game of cat-and-mouse they are playing there in the cold, dark depths. Life aboard a submarine is a constant silent warfare of hunting other subs, evading detection, and avoiding collision.
As interesting as all of those insights were, what gripped me was something the captain mentioned at the end.
Bad News from Home
Throughout their ten-month deployment, news from home comes only once a week, in the form of short messages only a few sentences long. Before deploying, each member of the crew authorizes the captain to read all incoming messages and censor any news that might distract them from their mission. All deaths, breakups, and other bad news are held back, keeping each affected crew member blissfully unaware until the very end of the deployment. As one of the last acts at sea, on the day before returning to port, the captain has a private meeting with each crew member who received bad news during the deployment to finally give it to them. For the crew, it’s a miserable day of waiting to find out if your name will be called to report to the captain. And it’s a miserable day for the captain, who has to be the bearer of a steady flow of life’s worst. As he tells it:
On the day before the boat returns to dock, the captain has to call individuals to his cabin, one by one, and deliver the bad news. For me, that was the toughest part of the role. I hated the responsibility.
Once those messages are delivered, a message is broadcast to the whole crew, to say, “That’s the end of the bad news.”https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233225/spend-seven-months-UNDERWATER-nuclear-submarine.html.
Good News from God’s Word
A large part of biblical counseling is helping Christians to see ourselves and our problems in light of God’s Word. Couples cobble together a shattered marriage by reorienting back to the Lord and His commands. The suffering and the grieving are comforted by reminders of the great and precious promises of God’s sovereignty and His goodness. For the biblical counselors who sit in on hundreds, even thousands, of hours of counselees sharing their “news from home,” many times it is life’s worst. And that, as the captain put it, “is the toughest part of the role.”
Perhaps you are a believer reading this today and you, too, are dealing with bad news from home. Let me encourage you to look at how your “deployment” ends, as the Apostle John records these words at the end of Revelation:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
(Revelation 21:1-7)
Whatever you may be going through, God assures believers of two vital truths in His Word:
First, this world is not our home (Hebrews 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1; 2 Peter 2:11). The Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation, has gone to prepare our true homes and will call each of us to it in time (John 14:2; Hebrews 12:2).
Second, while all around us in this world we see endless misery, despair, poverty, and all the effects of sin and the curse, John’s vision is a promise to us: A Day is coming. Soon our Lord Jesus Christ will return. In triumph and judgment, He will right every wrong and put all His enemies under His blessed feet. Then a call will go out to the four corners of the earth to every sinner saved by grace. The joyful announcement to all of God’s redeemed will be heard as the Lord Himself wipes away every tear from every child He purchased with His own precious blood.
For now, all creation still groans, and our hearts often ache with suffering (Romans 8:22-24). But soon, when the dust of the final battle settles on that Great Day, all God’s enemies will be defeated—even that final enemy, Death. All will be at peace. All will be at rest. Then, to borrow the captain’s words, we who know and love the Lord Jesus will hear the announcement our souls so burdened at present eagerly long to hear,
“That’s the end of the bad news.”