My assurance is in knowing HE IS ON THE BOAT TOO.
Bad dreams, monsters under the bed, noises in the closet…Kids get scared, and as parents, we check under their beds, look in their closets, and let our kids sleep with us to reassure them. We do whatever it takes to ease our children’s fears, to keep and make them feel safe. Of course, in the Bible, God repeatedly tells us as his children not to be afraid. However, sometimes we still forget, and He has to find other ways to remind us.
***
The year was 2009, and my husband and I were building our second house. Normally, we would work on it together, but on that particular night, the kids and I stayed home because my son was sick with the flu.
The sky had been dark for several hours when my husband trudged through the door. He collapsed onto the couch, obviously exhausted from being at his job all day and then working the entire evening on our new house. As he held our son on his lap, my husband detailed the events that had brought him in so late. He explained how he had climbed up the ladder and walked across the attic rafters, adding the extra bracing for the roof as he went, and when he was quite a distance from the ladder, the bulb flickered out on his work light.
My husband had no choice but to try to feel his way, stepping slowly across the twenty-four-inch gaps between the tie beams of each truss in abyssal darkness to find the ladder he had climbed up on. If he had lost his footing in the dark, the drop was eight feet to the floor below.
“I had no idea how far I had moved from the ladder.” My husband’s weariness filtered through his tone. “I really don’t know how I ever found it to get down.”
With tired eyes, my husband lifted our son and carried him to bed. I followed, and as I stood in the doorway watching my husband tuck him in, our little boy gazed up at his dad, and in a hoarse, congested voice, he whispered, “Daddy, I don’t know why you were worried when the light went out. Don’t you know, ‘… the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest’ Joshua 1:9.” (This was a verse we had worked on memorizing a couple of weeks earlier.)
***
If a five-year-old child understands God’s words so clearly, why do adults have so much trouble? If we are Christians, we know God is always with us, but we still worry. Sure, adult problems can be a little more detrimental than monsters under the bed, but if God is with us, what do we have to fear?
I am reminded of the passage of scripture in Mark, chapter 8, when Jesus was finished teaching by the sea and told his disciples, “…Let us pass over unto the other side” (Mark 8:35 KJV). In Mark 8:36-38, we are told that Jesus and his disciples boarded the ship, and while Jesus was sleeping, a storm came, a storm so great that the disciples feared they would die. They woke Jesus, saying, “…Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 8:38 KJV). In three simple words, “…Peace, be still…,” Jesus calmed the wind and the sea (Mark 8:39 KJV). And then he asked the disciples why they were afraid. In Mark 8:40, Jesus questions, “…Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” (KJV).
Two things I note in this story:
- Jesus told them to cross to the other side of the sea.
- Jesus was on the boat with them.
I think one of the hardest parts of becoming an adult was not having that same assurance as when I was a child, the assurance when my mother could hug me and tell me everything would be okay. As an adult, I realized that there is no person who knows what tomorrow will hold or the outcome of a problem or situation. However, we have a Father who does… and he tells us not to be afraid because He is with us, right there in the storm, rocking on the waves with us in our tiny boat. And if we believe on Him and trust Him, we know we are safe because our eternal home is with Him.
