We were going to drown
Its not easy to trust God – is it?
Well, I spose its easy when things are going well,
but when you’re stuck in the middle of a horrible situation, its much more difficult.
I thought I was going to drown once – literally.
Jesus had spent all day teaching, from Simon’s boat, like he often did.
The sun had shone, it was one of those days when there didn’t seem to be a cloud in the sky.
The crowd had lined up on the shore, hanging on to his every word, in case they missed something.
Not they could understand all that he was saying. We couldn’t understand.
He told stories, as usual, on that day about sowers and seeds and mustard.
He took time to explain it all to us afterwards, thank goodness.
Anyway, he ended up exhausted!
It really used to take it out of him, all those stories, and answering questions and dealing with the crowd, and then dealing with us and our questions.
And where was there to go to get some peace?
Only out onto the lake, so that’s what we did.
Our boat had Jesus in the back – he zonked out as soon as he lay down –
and the others with us got into other boats to follow.
As I said, Jesus went straight to sleep and the rest of us just quietly got on with sailing the boat.
I suppose we were nearly at the middle of the lake when the storm blew up.
It just came at us out of nowhere.
We were used to storms but we’d never seen anything like this!
The wind blew, the boat surged, the waves came in over the side.
It was all we could to to save the sails never mind trying to stop water coming into the boat.
It wasn’t long before we were terrified!
The boat was surging up and down, the waves were relentlessly coming over the sides,
and you know that when more water is coming in than you get out, you’re in deep trouble.
How Jesus managed to stay asleep I just don’t know.
But he wasn’t asleep for long, because someone – I can’t remember who –
shook him (a little too roughly I remember thinking) and shouted above the wind:
Teacher! Master! Jesus! We’re going to drown! Don’t you care?!
Jesus opened his eyes
and, for a moment time seemed to stand still, as we waited to see what would happen.
He stood up, and very calmly he spoke to the wind, ‘Be quiet!’
Then he looked at the waves and said, ‘Be still!’
And – to our amazement – as soon as he spoke, the wind dropped and the sea became totally calm.
We stood there, soaked to the skin, our mouths open and our hearts still beating fast.
‘Why are you so afraid?’, he asked us. ‘Do you still not have any faith?’
No-one could think of anything to say and, one by one, we bent down and started bailing the water out of the boat.
But when Jesus had closed his eyes again, we whispered to each other:
‘Who is this man? Even the wind and waves obey him!’
And I thought to myself, what should we have done?
If I really trust Jesus, what will I do the next time?
Jacqui A Horton 2009