Through the storms of life, we never walk alone

Readers,

I am a deeply spiritual person, and identify as a Christian. My faith is an important part of my life, and I rely on it to help me better love every single person around me.

Today, in my church, the Gospel reading was from Matthew, and it related the story of Jesus walking on water. For those of you who have grown up in a Christian church, this story will be familiar. For those of you who haven't grown up in a Christian church, let me give you a brief background. The context of this story takes place during Jesus's ministry, the time when He traveled all over Israel preaching the Gospel, the Good News, with His disciples.

In this story, Jesus leaves the disciples to go pray, and they're on a ship in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. A storm hits at night, and the disciples are scared. Jesus begins to walk across the water to them (one of His most famous Biblical miracles), and when they see Him, they become afraid, thinking He's a ghost. He assures them it is He, and Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, says, "Jesus, if it's you, call me to come to you across the water." Jesus calls Peter, and Peter gets out of the boat, and, miraculously, begins to walk across the water to Jesus. However, the storm is fierce, and Peter becomes afraid, and begins to sink. Jesus holds out His hand to Peter and saves him, and says, "Oh, you of little faith."

Throughout the different churches I've attended, and Bible studies I've participated in, I've heard a lot of discussions of this passage before; many of them talk about having the courage of Peter to GET OUT OF THE BOAT, a metaphor for having the courage to trust God and walk out into the storms of life, knowing that God is going to help us walk "across the water" and weather the storm. That's a huge challenge for me and for a lot of Christians--when times are bad, we want to rely solely on ourselves, to just stay in one spot on our little "boat," to be scared, and not let ourselves be thrown into (and changed by) the storm around us.

However, what happens when we DO choose to make the step out of the boat? I find a lot of Christians struggle with this, too, especially ME. Going to grad school was a huge step out of my "boat"--I felt called to enter the profession of student affairs, and it was a huge, trusting leap to make this move to Florida and to come to a new school, but I did it. But, now I'm here, in the middle of a sea, and the storms of life rage around me, and I question WHY I got out of my boat in the first place!

With grad school, and with many other situations in my life, it's not the step out of the boat that scares me the most, it's the walk through the storm to get to Jesus. The whole time, Jesus is saying, "Come to me. Trust me. Through me, you can do this. You can walk on this water. Trust me." And oftentimes, we take those first steps out of the boat, and we're exhilarated. "Yes, God!" we exult. "You are helping me! I'm trusting you! I'm walking on water, thank You so much!"

But then, what happens next? We lose sight of God... and the storm gets louder. We forget who gave us the ability to walk on the water in the first place, and we lose our focus on the reason WHY we're walking on water, and just start to focus on the water itself. Suddenly, everything is overwhelming. We're all alone, in the middle of a raging, storming sea. It's dark outside, it's cold, it's wet, and we got in over our heads. Who were we to think we could walk on water all by ourselves? We were CRAZY!

And thus, we start to sink. We lose sight of the One who called us out of the boat in the first place, we let the storm and sound and sea distract us, and we sink. We get down on ourselves, we're lonely, and we're SCARED.

And yet, we forgot that we WEREN'T alone on that sea.

Someone called us out there to walk with Him.

And all of a sudden, there He is. There's His hand. Grab it, it's held out to you, to me, to all of us.

Suddenly, the sea isn't so scary. The night isn't so dark. The whole time, we could have walked on the surface of the sea and been safe in the storm, if only we hadn't lost sight of the One who invited us into the storm in the first place.

And He saves us. He pulls us up from the depths. He comforts us, and, with the Love of a Father, He gently chides us. "Oh, you of little faith," He says. "How could you forget that I was here the whole time?"

In the storms of our lives, in the daily stresses and troubles and worries and pains, it's easy to lose sight of God. Although He calls us into living our lives fully in the first place, once we're in the midst of things, we look away. We think, "Hey, this isn't so bad. Look at me! I'm surviving! I'm walking on water! I've got this!"

And then, all of a sudden, things get worse. The stress gets overwhelming, the troubles mount, and the world gets dark and cold and lonely. We have lost sight of our Helper, and so we start to lose faith. We start to sink into self-pity, into doubt, and into fear. We feel like nothing can save us from the predicament we're in.

And yet, if we look up, there it is. There's His hand. God has been waiting, patiently, the whole time. Through the storm, He's been standing right there, calling us to Him. We lost sight of Him for a while, but that doesn't mean He left us. He's standing right there, waiting for us to call on Him again. He saves us from the storm; He lessens our stress and relieves our doubts and fears, and shows us that, through Him, anything is possible. He gently chides us, those of little faith, and reminds us that He'll ALWAYS be there. He's the one who wanted us to experience the storm in the first place, but He wants us to experience the storm with our sights on Him, holding His hand. Only then can we walk on water.

My friends, whether or not we share a spirituality or a faith, I pray that you NEVER feel alone in the storm. Help is always there, waiting for you to call out for it. Yes, we have to get out of the boat in the first place to experience life's storms, but we also have to be willing to call for help along the way, to remember that opportunities for help never abandon us. A source of help is always right there, waiting to stretch out a hand. Take it!