Imagine you are a merchant. The year is 1875, and your ship sails from a harbor in New York. You have a big trade to make in San Francisco. West coast, here you come!

Wait a second—you have a big, big problem. You want to get to the Pacific Ocean. Right now, you are in the Atlantic. You need to sail around South America.

San Francisco is far enough! Now you have to sail almost 8,000 miles around an extra hunk of land. There must be an easier way!

With a canal, traders and explorers could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific more easily. Canal-diggers worked hard. All their hard work paid off for people today.

2014 is the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal. Today, more than thirty ships go through the canal each day. Still, many large military and oil ships can’t squeeze through the canal. So workers are making the canal even wider. They are building concrete walls more than 100 feet high and more than two miles long. The new channels will be deeper and wider. More and bigger ships will be able to go through. Imagine how that could help sailors in the future.

We all are better off because of the hard work of people in the past. We can thank God for that and remember that someone in the future might be thankful for our work today.

Bon voyage!