When I was in college, I spent a couple of summers up in the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound northwest of Seattle, Washington. During one of those summers, I was talked into taking a water bike out into the waters to catch salmon.  The resort I worked at was running a contest that rewarded the first one to catch a salmon a dollar a pound.  So out I went one afternoon, on a very high profile water bike, fishing rod, bait and enthusiasm all ready.  I positioned myself off a point of land where I was most likely to be successful and started fishing. In brief, it was a precarious endeavor.  In a little while, I hooked a large salmon.  When it took the bait, it ran hard to the side of the water bike and almost tipped me over.  Duly sobered by the dangerous situation I was in, I pedaled, steered and maneuvered for about a half an hour, while fighting with my fish to try and land him.  I had a net with me and was looking forward to concluding the catch.  Then, as can often happen, the fish broke free, the line went slack and my fishing ego went flat with it.  I reeled in, planning to continue, when I looked up, and to my great dismay, found that I had drifted in a tidal change about a mile off shore (I was only a few hundred feet when I started fishing).  While I was preoccupied I had drifted without even knowing it.  And now I was in another kind of trouble.  The tidal current that swept me out, was running strong, the water was very choppy, and it was late in the day.  It took me over an hour of fervent pedaling, to get me back to the zone I had started in, then another fifteen minutes to land on the beach.  I was glad to be ashore.

 Unfortunately, we can all drift if we don't pay attention to where we are, as well as to what we are doing.  I have watched friends drift from fervent, life giving relationships with the Lord, to lukewarm, distant-at-best, religious activities.   Others have drifted from the clarity of vision and purpose to wandering aimlessly.  Drift has taken its tole on moral living,  marriages, ministries, businesses, families, communities and even our nation.  We all need to be careful that we don't lose site of who our Lord Jesus Christ is, and who He has called us to be.  

All life drift comes from small beginnings.  Allowing other things
to sneak in, and steal our time, our attention or our passion from our
life with the Lord.  If we have drifted, we can get back to where we belong, but it will take a lot of hard, steadfast work and we will need to get our eyes back on the Lord in the very same areas that we let go of.  God will certainly help us, but we will need to learn to give ourselves steadfastly to faith building, life giving disciplines. 

Drifting can be overcome.  That is the good news.  Even better news, is that we don't need to drift at all if we hold steadfast the life that has been given to us through Jesus Christ the Lord.