Fishermen started making the trek out on to the Lake Erie ice floe hours before dawn. At dawn there was a slight crack in the ice near shore. The crack was hardly noticeable. The weather forecasters predicted 35 mph winds and temperatures warming to 45° by midday. The ice floe was several miles long, eighteen inches thick, and several hundred yards wide.
Fishing has a way of getting into a man’s blood, sort of like the lust for gold might get into a miner’s heart. It makes them capable of doing crazy things. The prize they were seeking was the walleye. The walleye is a ferocious predator. It has large eyes, when full-grown it is about as long as a man’s arm, and the fish puts up a big fight when hooked. Lake Erie is full of them.
A little after daylight the crack widened to about one foot in places. Still the fishermen came by the scores. Some drove all-terrain vehicles. In places men made bridges of wood pallets to help them cross over. By 10:00 in the morning there were 135 fishermen on the ice floe trying to catch walleyes.
Then in late morning it happened. The ice floe broke completely away from shore. The pallet bridges fell into the icy water with a splash. The fishermen became completely separated from shore. The 135 men were trapped on a raft of ice. The wind and currents pushed the ice floe quickly out to open water. The men had no means at their disposal to return to shore. The water was far too cold to swim. A chasm had opened up between them and safety.
Soon the ice floe was over a thousand feet from shore.
The men floating out into the open water of Lake Erie on an ice floe is a little picture of souls in this world drifting away from God. Sin has come in and opened up a chasm between God and men.
The chasm first opened up in the dawn of the history of the human race when the first parents disobeyed God’s commandment, and the human race has been drifting away from God ever since. Human beings separated from God, for the most part, have preferred to go about their various pursuits as if nothing is wrong. One reason God allows so much trouble in the world is so that men and women come to their senses and realize something drastic has gone wrong. If it were not for the constant trials and tribulations which come into our lives, who would seek God?