miracle 5

I have always loved travelling but I am not always the best traveller or more to the point I am definitely not the best passenger. I quite enjoy driving particularly if it is a long journey and you are really getting somewhere. A couple of years ago Annie and I drove from Norwich to Central Switzerland in a day! On the down side I am the only person I know who has been carsick twice whilst driving the car! I have been distinctly queasy on an aeroplane although I have only been really sick once but I like to keep the bag handy. I am not good on boats either. I have been known to spend an entire five hour channel crossing up on deck being ill over the side when the doors of the vessel have been locked to prevent passengers going out because it was too rough!

 

So if I was a disciple they would never have gotten me onto that boat crossing the lake after the people had been fed. Already Jesus had calmed a storm on the same lake when they had been tossed around like flotsam and jetsam. To go through that experience again despite the incredible miracle of the creator over his creation would have been definitely off limits. They would have had to bang me over the head and carry me onto the boat. There is a children’s song – With Christ in the vessel you can smile at the storm – no way! Not in a literal sense anyway.

 

But on this occasion Jesus is not in the boat – they are on their own. I would have been dead. And then Jesus comes walking towards them on the water and means to walk on by them. At this point I would have been suicidal and no doubt would have been confessing my sins in order to meet my maker. But then Peter is walking towards Him on the water and in our terror we watch as the waves seem to support the weight of two men. When Jesus gets in the boat he tells us not to be afraid and immediately we are across the lake.

 

Storms in life will come and maybe we can learn that Jesus is with us whether or not he is in the boat with us so we can see him or whether we can’t see him but just believe that he is walking with us through it to bring us safely to the other side. Whatever our circumstance I will seek to trust him, there is no alternative!