Tuesday, May 26
…when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
—Mark 6:49-50
Jesus, who had stayed alone on land to pray and get some spiritual rest, saw that his followers were having a tough time, and so came towards them. As you can see by the quote above, they did not recognize him. Or maybe they did, but they did not believe their eyes, because he was literally “walking on water.”
In their fear, they took him to be a ghost, and they were even more terrified. Then he spoke to them with his reassuring voice, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Every day, we see God's hand in our lives, but we often do not believe our eyes. Or we see the love of Christ right in front of us, yet we do not see Christ in that love. We do not believe our heart, even our own yearning heart.
We long to know that God is right here with us. But we are sometimes afraid to believe it, even when we see it. Take for example the man who jumped onto the subway tracks in New York City, into the path of a train, to rescue a man he didn't know. Or the cancer cures we hear about more and more frequently. Or the scientific breakthroughs in medicine that enable doctors to make “the lame to walk, and the blind to see.”
We call these things science or heroism, and we bemoan the fact that we don't see miracles today as our Christian ancestors saw them in New Testament times. But we DO see them; we just don't always recognize them. We do not believe our own eyes.
There are wonderful miracles all around us, including the healing of hearts and the change of circumstances when we are in a bad place. God asks us not to be afraid, but to believe. With that belief, our life can be transformed.
O God of all possibilities, help me to trust you and believe that you are here with us every minute. Amen.
This Signpost originally appeared on explorefaith in 2007.
