JESUS WALKS ON THE WATER (Photo credit: Fergal of Claddagh)
“22 Right then, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead to the other side of the lake while he dismissed the crowds. 23 When he sent them away, he went up onto a mountain by himself to pray. Evening came and he was alone. 24 Meanwhile, the boat, fighting a strong headwind, was being battered by the waves and was already far away from land. 25 Very early in the morning he came to his disciples, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified and said, “It’s a ghost!” They were so frightened they screamed. 27 Just then Jesus spoke to them, “Be encouraged! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” 28 Peter replied, “Lord, if it’s you, order me to come to you on the water.” 29 And Jesus said, “Come.” Then Peter got out of the boat and was walking on the water toward Jesus. 30 But when Peter saw the strong wind, he became frightened. As he began to sink, he shouted, “Lord, rescue me!” 31 Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him, saying, “You man of weak faith! Why did you begin to have doubts?” 32 When they got into the boat, the wind settled down. 33 Then those in the boat worshipped Jesus and said, “You must be God‘s Son!” Matthew 14:22-33 ( taken from the Common English Bible)
Let me share a story beside this passage of the gospel of Matthew that is brought to my mind when I read it: In the summer of 2005 I went to the beach with some friends for the first time. I remember the event quite well. It was the summer when Sean Paul would sing “we be burnin” and I was allowed to go to the beach by myself. Before that the whole family would go to the beach together as we lived in a coastal village.
That first time has stayed particularly fresh in my mind because it was the afternoon that I nearly drowned. It was hot, the waves were not too dangerous and quite honestly I didn’t pay attention to the lifeguard flag to see if we could bathe or not. A bunch of us arrived at the beach and even though it wasn’t very far away from home, it was definitely sweating hot. We had started getting into the water when all of a sudden I could feel that the tide was rougher than it had seemed at first glance. ” Wow, there’s strong undertow today”, I remember chuckling. My friend J who was close to me also noticed it. Before we could actually realise we found ourselves dragged into an eddy. To speak the truth, I was the one getting sucked in and my friend J tried to help me by pulling me out of the whirlpool. He eventually got sucked into a different eddy fairly far away from me, I found out later. By the time he got caught up into the eddy, I was already struggling to keep my head above water and I couldn’t jump to move my arms so that the people from the shore would seek help. Nonetheless, they did notise and the last view that I got at this precise moment was of people on the beach getting closer to the shore in an alarming way.
Then, I stopped fighting; I knew I was going to drown. The first thought that I had, quite honestly, was “my parents are not going to know that I’m dead”. Then, I recall having this sort of emergency call to the Heavens in which I told God “Father, please help me”…
The mystery comes in the story when I felt this push on my back that enabled me to touch the bottom of the sea and eventually come out of the sea. I reached my beach umbrella and laid underneath it, coughing water out of my mouth. It was then when I started processing all that had just happened.
At first, I thought it was my friend J who pushed me to the shore; that somehow he managed to swim around the eddy and push me out. Then I saw he was already out as if nothing had happened. When I recovered from the shock I approached him and asked him if he was the one who had pushed me. It was then when he told me he had got caught up in another whirlpool and that he couldn’t get out either.
I like calling it a “mystery,” but not because one could not explain what happened back then. Probably, had I known a little bit more of biology, I would have understood how eddies really work or how I really did manage to get out of it. Yet, to this day, I still don’t know what really happened. I don’t really know!
What I do know is that for a while, I did struggle with believing that a miracle could have happened in my life; that God may have actually pushed me out of there in a powerful, supernatural way.
For quite some time I thought I was stupid for believing that something like that could happen. I grew up in a family where the spiritual, the supernatural, the intangible was not to be believed because I would be a simpleton, stupid, naive person, whom the “wicked” people would have brained-washed.
But what my heart tells me is that, if I truly believe what the Bible says, I could also believe that God worked it out for me in ways beyond human capacity that day. I believe by faith (faith not earned by me but through the merciful grace of God) that Jesus died for my sin, that I am saved by believing this. If I believe this condition to be true to the core of my heart , then why doubt about God’s deeds?
What I’m really talking about is not whether God did this or that at a certain point in my life. That’s completely irrelevant to you. I really encourage you to believe to the core what the Bible says.For many years, I have suffered through doubts. Call it lack of faith, call it whatever you want. I would question if God was really for real, or if what the Bible says was true.
I believe those are lies the enemy puts in our minds. That is why I like this passage so much. If you look at a picture of the event, it really portrays the craziness of the situation. Jesus sends his disciples off to the boat and the waters go wild as the night approaches. Everything looks alright up to this point, misfortunate but very common nonetheless.
What really dazzles me is the fact that Jesus walks ON the water. It’s crazy! He walks on the water in the wild storm, and he tells the terrified disciples not to be afraid. This is absolutely unbelievable.
I think doubts succumb to us when we try to put our understanding into God’s understanding and by that I believe we limit God. We make God a finite, tangible entity, who does not resemble the God, the Creator, not even a bit. He made us in his own image, not the other way around. It is ok for us not to understand things from the Bible, the truth that reveals to us who God is; but to my mind, it is not ok to disregard what we don’t understand.
I once met a student who believed that some parts of the Bible were not true and others were actually true. I often wonder where is the line between what’s true and what’s not.
I almost drown once and I still live to say that when I prayed “God help me,” I managed to put my feet ashore. Some people may find it a great coincidence, I found myself with my eyes fixed on Jesus and he made me walk on wild water. I don’t think everything in my life is supernatural but I leave room for the possibility.
My prayer for you today is that you may NEVER loose heart in the belief of who God is and that the currents of the tides of life may not cause you to drift away from Him.
Abba‘s Kid
“she came close to drowning, and in these extreme moments, she recalls how she cast herself upon God in a prayer of surrender, fully expecting to die. In fact, her surrender meant that she stopped fighting her circumstances and acknowledged that the power of the undertow was beyond her control. This in turn released something in the situation and freed her from the downward drag.” [taken from At Sea with God, Margaret Silf, page 89]
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