God in the Boat
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and burst upon that house;
and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.
Matthew 7:25
Lately, my world has been riddled with peskiness. First was a critter invasion that began with the mouse upstaging Pastor Tim’s sermon a couple Sundays ago and ended the following weekend when Hiram removed a mouse nest from an air vent in our car. Who knows how long it had been there, but the little devils had hung curtains and decorated their living room with Costco furniture before we threw them out.
The same weekend, the weeds in my flower gardens required gallons of my blood, sweat and tears to get things back in shape. As if that wasn’t enough, when I talked to a fellow saint in the parking lot after church the next day, I was stung by a bee.
I don’t know about you, but when I became a Christian, I signed up for things like peace, grace, salvation, sanctification and forgiveness. I did not sign up for unrelenting peskiness. But the longer I’m a Christian, the more peskiness I encounter. Sometimes it’s not just minor peskiness. Sometimes it’s major, life-threatening, tragic stuff.
Whenever my whine-o-meter kicks in – over paltry things like weeds in my flower beds, and over tragic things like a deadly accident – I remember a comment a very wise friend made about Matthew 7:25. “The verse doesn’t if a storm comes. It says storms will come. That means Christians can count on storms. And it means Christians can trust their Rock to stand firm when the storms arrive.”
Now isn’t that what Pastor Tim’s been saying every Sunday since he started preaching in Mark? Jesus didn’t promise to eliminate sickness or sadness, struggles or storms. He promised to heal our diseases and grant joy in the midst of sadness. He promised to be a Rock to stand on when we struggle, hope in the midst of storms, peace in the midst of peskiness.
Lately, I’ve been learning that when I became a Christian, I signed up for something bigger than peskiness. I signed up for Immanuel: God with me, God in the bee stings, God in the mouse nests, God in my son’s illness, rebellion and healing, God in Mom’s Alzheimer’s, a great big, faithful God in the midst of my pesky little boat.
And ever so slowly, I’m learning to appreciate what I signed up for, though I could do without a few of my traveling companions. Don’t get me wrong. I want God to stay. But the mice can jump ship, the sooner the better.
