Walking on Water

After the miracle of the loaves and fishes in John 6:1-14, Jesus, knowing that the people wanted to make Him king, withdrew to a secluded place while His disciples took a boat and began rowing to Capernaum. Since I’ve already written about this I’ll repost it now.

It was the fourth watch of the night (John 6:14-21; Matthew 14:22-32) sometime between three and six in the morning. The boatload of apostles, under Jesus’ instruction to “go to the other side,” have made it only halfway because the wind kicked up and the turbulent waves had impeded their progress. For hours their boat had been toss around like a toy. The Sea of Galilee was like that. Calm one minute, treacherous the next. Then all of a sudden the apostles spot a man walking on the water. “A ghost!” they cry in fear, for what else could it be?

But it’s Jesus’ familiar voice that rings back, “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” And it’s Peter who responds by asking Jesus to tell him to come walk on the water, too. When Jesus does, Peter gets out of the boat, and what do you know! He really does walk on water, that is until he takes his eyes off Jesus and once again notices the boisterous winds and tossing sea, and then he starts sinking.

What a lesson! In this tempest tossed-world, with storms all around us to impede our progress, we don’t have to drown in our circumstances. We can actually walk on these troubled waters, but only if we keep our eyes on Jesus. The minute we take our eyes off Him and put them on our problems, we’ll start sinking. There’s no doubt in my mind that had Peter kept his focus on Jesus he would have walked all the way across the sea to the other side.  Instead, Jesus had to pull the nearly drowned Peter out of the water and into the boat. And I’m sure Peter’s heart broke a little when Jesus admonished him with, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst though doubt?”

Most of us want to do what Jesus has instructed us to do. But as the world becomes more unstable, and circumstances more trying, it’s easy to allow fear to enter. And when it does we have two choices: Do we keep our eyes on Jesus and allow Him to take us through to the other side? Or do we concentrate on our circumstances and allow them to overwhelm us? I think we’re going to have ample opportunity in the days and weeks and months ahead to answer that for ourselves.

Until next week,

Sylvia