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Matthew 14:22-36
The world is getting scarier all the time. You never know what perfectly terrifying thing will happen next, even in a small town. Consider the frightening experience a lonely widow named Wilma Sullivan suffered in Portageville, Missouri. She went to bed at about 11:30. She picked up a novel and settled down to read for a while. She grew sleepy. She put down the novel, turned off the light and settled down to sleep.
People who sometimes sleep with their arms above their heads will understand what happened next. It was a minor matter. Her left arm simply grew tired of the position. She was dimly aware of the discomfort. It continued. Still dozing, she tried to lower her arm. It wouldn’t come down.
“Then, she says, she became aware of a warm, firm hand holding her arm tightly. She woke up in a hurry and in a panic. She struggled in the dark to free her hand, but the strange hand wouldn’t turn loose. The harder she struggled, the tighter the grasp grew. She was struck by how warm that hand was, and how firmly it held her. Frantically, she tried harder to get loose. Then something dawned on her. It was her own right hand doing the holding.
It almost turned out badly after all. She nearly fell out of bed laughing. But she didn’t. She finally managed to pry her right hand loose from her left, laughed a while, and then fell back to sleep for the rest of the night, and no harm was done. And she figured the whole thing out. It was simply a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.”
Sometimes our fears get the best of us. It happened to the disciples. They were sailing across the lake when a terrible storm arose. They were fishermen by trade.
They'd experienced many such storms. They were strong men, but when the storm showed no signs of letting up, it got the better of them. They feared for their very lives. Then across the water they saw Jesus. In times of panic sometimes our minds run wild. The disciples failed to recognize Christ. One of them cried out, “It is a ghost!”
Jesus spoke words of comfort to his fearful disciples, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” What beautiful words to the fearful heart: It is I. in our moments of distress, Jesus comes.
Jacob discovered that. He'd hit a low point in his life. He'd thought about killing himself, but he was too poor and too tired to secure the means to do it. He found a park bench. He didn't eat, because there was nothing to eat. All he thought about was his death.
A couple of days later he saw in the distance a teenage girl entering the park with a friend. Jacob wondered what on earth someone so innocent and angelic looking was doing in a park filled with derelicts. He closed his eyes. In a few minutes he heard a soft voice speaking to him.
Jacob opened his eyes and saw this same teenage girl looking at him with compassion. He was caught off guard. It was the first time he'd heard anyone speak words of kindness to him in years. At that moment he didn't know whether he wanted to cry with gratitude or laugh with cynicism. But her concern moved him despite himself. “What do you want?” he growled at her.
“Sir,” the young girl said, “I was afraid to come over here, but I feel like God is nudging me to tell you something, before I get back on my bus. I wish I knew how to say it better but, well, sir, Jesus loves you. He loves you. He really does.”
Jacob looked at her in disbelief. After all the heartaches he'd been through, all the indignity he'd suffered, all the rage that had filled his soul for so many years, this young girl told him Jesus loved him. As he looked up at her face, he saw tears streaming down her cheeks, and to his astonishment he began to weep as well. “No one could love me, child. "It's too late for me,” he said between sobs.
“No,” she replied urgently as she took his thin, gnarled hand into hers. “It’s not too late. God will gladly take you if only you’d let him. Just tell him you want to. He will love you and help you.” Jacob says it was at that moment that he knew God was reaching out to him through her. He knew deep within that he was being offered help in his hour of greatest need.
When the storms of life are raging, when all of life seems out of control, when we feel totally helpless, Jesus comes.
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Rev. Charles Eldredge is a member of Maitland Church of the Brethren. He has a Facebook page and can be contacted by email: ce1133 @verizon.net.