“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” (Luke 14:28-30)
I grew up under the teaching that God’s eyes are on me, and I always took that as some sort of threat. “Watch out...He’s watching. Be good.”
How different I see it now. He watches me alright. He chuckles at my humanness. His deep belly-laughs flood the Heavens when I find the joy He’s hidden in His creation. Hot tears roll down His cheeks each time He takes on my hurt.
Do you believe that He watches over you? Or do you feel like you are being thrown by the random waves of life? What is happening in your life that pulls you into the undertow and out to the deepest depths? What is it that has become bigger than your God?
Think about Peter and his moment on the water. We are taught at a young age that he sank when he was beckoned by Jesus. He failed in his Faith.
Or did he?
He did make it for a while. His Faith caused him to do the impossible, if only for a brave-hearted second. There was a flash in time when one man’s Faith did what no other human has done before or since. Faith overrode logic. Doubt. Humanity. Peter’s fixation on Jesus fought back the complexities of his flesh, and he lived as we are all meant to live.
I believe I can live in that moment. I believe you can too. There is a seed of Faith that God plants in each of us when we are born. Over time, that seed grows if we feed it with the right nutrients. Some of us dry out as we cross the vast wastelands, and so our Faith thirsts until it shrinks back within us and we forget it’s there.
What happens while we’re crossing life’s desert? Is it that our expectations of life get shattered? Do we think we are entitled to a better life here on earth? When we fall beneath the blows of life and our trust in God is shaken, we must have expected something different from life – from God Himself. But what if this is what is intended? What if life is meant to have pain to create a longing in us for something better? Something perfect?
C.S. Lewis penned it accurately when he wrote, “Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
Slowly, I am learning to live within the eye of the storm. It is God’s eye in the storm, a calmness that pays no respect to the swirling madness that encircles me. Yes, I sink sometimes and have to drag myself back to the boat. I cannot escape my humanness. But each time, as I fix my gaze on Him, I go a little farther.
While I will always live trying to keep the ocean at my feet, my life is not about getting to the shore. It is about the walk there. Oh, I will get there – but only through the window of eternity. Each time I put one foot in front of the other, I’m giving my endurance a chance to grow. And that endurance is what will get us to the shore.