It’s nearly the end of January now, and the joys and thrills of Christmas are but a distant memory. The tinsel is away in the cupboard, the Christmas chocolates are long since gone and the glees of December have been overshadowed by the glooms of January. We are back to real life, and real life can be hard.
I think as a Christian, I get a similar feeling to this whenever I come back from an amazing time with God. Whether it’s Momentum, an Alpha weekend or an amazing encounter at church, I come back on fire! But then sooner or later real life kicks in and I seem to lose the joy, lose the passion, lose the fire. I come down from the mountain and into the valley of real life and it is HARD.
In John 6 the disciples saw Jesus do an amazing miracle, turning a boy’s packed lunch into enough food for 5,000 men plus women and children. (You can read about it in the previous post in my John’s 7 signs series thing here.) After this happens, Jesus withdraws to pray, and the disciples head across the river in a boat…
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“When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.”
It’s amazing to see how quickly the disciples go from being excited and amazed at the power of Jesus, to being scared of Jesus. It’s crazy to think that that very afternoon they’d seen Jesus do miracles, and then by evening they’ve already let “real life” take over.
But the amazing thing is, Jesus meets them in that place.
Jesus meets us in the good times and the hard times, he walks out across the storm and comes towards us, and when we get scared he says to us “It’s me. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.” (The Message). He is with us!
So often in situations I feel like God is far away, or now I’ve left the mountain top somehow I’ve lost God. But what is amazing and what I need to remember more and more is that God has not left me! He’s not forgotten me. He’s walking out into the stormy mess of my life and is saying to me “It’s all right, it’s me, don’t be scared, I’m WITH you.”
The other amazing thing in this passage is that as soon as Jesus gets into the boat with them, they arrive at their destination. Now I’m not saying here that as soon as we let Jesus into our tough situations the tough situations will stop, our lives will suddenly be back on the mountain and everything will be fandabydozy.
When we let Jesus into our lives he doesn’t take away our storms, but as we let him in suddenly we aren’t focussing on the storm anymore. We realise that he is with us and that means we are in the safest place we could possibly be.
Whether we’re in an amazing place with God, or struggling to find him in the storm, let’s know that the same Jesus is with us and alongside us no matter what! And because of that what seems like the worst place to be is the best place we could possibly be!
