Creations, Man's & God's

   When my son heard that we were going cruising and what ports we would visit on our 11 night time on the ocean, he told me there was one book I needed to read. It was:

   David McCullough's book Path Between the Oceans, the story of the Panama Canal.

   It is a long book, and by the time we had reached Panama I was only through the French phase and about to begin reading about the American one.

   The story of the Canal begins with the French and de Lesseps, the French engineer who had already built the Suez Canal in the Middle East. That European country spent many francs and much manpower to begin the work, only to have to give it up in the late 19th century. Their efforts were thwarted by the jungle, the fevers and their insistence on building a sea level canal without any locks.

   Then came the Americas, building on what the French had begun, deciding to focus on sanitation first  to eliminate yellow fever and reduce the malaria problem, then eventually building a lock system to raise boats from one ocean to a man-made lake, and then lock the boats down to the other ocean.

   That is a simplified version of the whole story, but, through the leadership of Teddy Roosevelt and his men on the ground there in Panama, the Canal was built and is still in operation today.

   It was the one place on our itinerary that I most wanted to see.

   And it was great to be able to view it first hand, especially after reading the book and realizing all that had gone into it. Its creation was indeed a wonder especially considering the machinery used and the obstacles overcome.

One of the mechanical "mules" taking a ship through the locks

Gates between locks two and three on the Atlantic end

The Canal has parallel locks. A ship beginning the descent to the Atlantic.

   But I came to realize as I looked back over our time at sea and the things we had seen, that I had been a party to more than that one man-made creation in Panama, as great as that was.

   Most every day on that boat, getting up early in the dark and waiting on deck for some light in the east, I got to experience God's creative powers, and they were always new and always different in some way.

   Those times on the top deck, alone most of the time, were fantastic.

   They are in the process of building new locks on the Canal, so as to be able to handle the larger ships that need the passage. As times change, so does the need.

   A new sunrise, one that has not been before, and one that gives rise to a new day, one that has not been lived in before…

   Now that is a Creation (with a capital C)