“And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2)
We all have our Youtube rabbit holes. One of mine is watching videos of storms at sea. Usually, they are filmed from a camera mounted on the bridge of a ship which implacably records the churning waters as the prow of the ship mounts high on the crest of a wave before plunging down into the valley below. An inadequate windshield wiper periodically swabs the glass impervious to intimidation by the elements at war around it. Facing a terrible storm on land is one thing—the wise man built his house upon the rock and all that—but facing it in a tiny vessel at sea is another. And really, all vessels are tiny in comparison to the size of the ocean at storm.
We’ve all been trying to hold on for a while now. Yet it seems like the wind only blows wilder and the waves mount higher and the night gets darker. Holding on is excruciating when it feels like the storm will never end; that morning might never come; and despair, rather than faith, feels as close as a breath upon your neck. What is there to lay hold of when everything around you is moving water?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of Jesus walking on the water in the fourth watch of the night. Walking on calm water would be a miraculous feat. But traversing it the middle of a storm when the wind whips spray off the tops of the waves and the waves are cartwheeling across the surface of the turbulent deep in foaming chaos? ‘Impossible’ doesn’t quite cover it. The gospel accounts each give a slightly different glimpse of the miracle as they always do. Perhaps most arresting to me is the detail that the disciples wonder if Jesus is a ghost; so incongruous is his form to the circumstances; so uncertain is their sight of him amid the waves. It is disturbing to realize that there are some times when even Jesus seems insubstantial in the middle of the storm.
But what seems isn’t what is.
In times like these the temptation is to judge what seems and what is likely; searching for any solid piece of flotsam on which to cling. But that is how idols are made. Instead, straining to see the Lord in the middle of the crashing waves—when we can’t quite get a solid look to know for sure that our Deliverer is at hand—takes us to the outer limits of our measure of faith. It requires lifting our focus from the strain of pure endurance to fixing our gaze on the one who is Spirit and Truth. It is anchoring our sight in another kingdom and calling the things that are not as though they are.
Man doesn’t walk on water, but the Son of Man does.
How perplexing that Jesus walked on the surface of the storm instead of calming it. He covered the distance on foot; an experience that must have been cold and challenging as he strode up and down over the swells to reach those straining against the weather in their little boat. It begs the question for me—and for all of us, really—why doesn’t Jesus calm the storm? We’re all exhausted from straining against the wind and the waves of circumstance. We’re all tired of this long night and its troubled weather.
Storms are catalysts for revelation, though. They bring to the surface what is hidden in the depths of each one of us and strip away the superfluous from our circumstances. They make the world formless and wild, but they have their purposes;—even if those purposes are known only to God on this side of eternity. But even so, I can’t help but feel that the fourth watch of the night is at hand and the Lord is near. You can catch a glimpse him—if you look up—he is once again moving over the face of the deep.
(A version of this article was published in the Nov/Dec issue of live magazine. Check them out here.)
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