Our Refuge Our Strength

One of my favorite paintings of Jesus is “Our Refuge Our Strength” by Morgan Weistling.  I have a copy above my computer at work and all day during my shift I get to contemplate it.  I love the scene depicted so much, Saint Peter reaching from the depths of the ocean towards Jesus and Jesus reaching back pulling him out from despair.  Peter looks stuck in quite the predicament, the waves crashing most of his body is consumed by the oceanic tempest; yet, Jesus looks calm and only needs one hand to rescue Peter.  What I love most this morning is that Peter is reaching out and finds Jesus’ hand.  When I began my reversion towards God, I remember that He gave me tons of spiritual consolations.  When I reached towards Him I was always certain to find Him, then as our relationship grew these consolations started fading.  Because I no longer received tangible manifestations of His presence in my life (of Him reaching back towards me) I began to doubt and became frightened thinking that He had deserted me.  Soon I discovered that He was challenging my faith to grow stronger- He was asking me to believe in Him to place my trust in Him even if I didn’t see Him.  After all that’s what faith is: to believe in the unseen, to trust in God based on spiritual understanding rather than proof. Nonetheless, like my past brother’s I wanted a golden calf to worship- meaning I wanted tangible evidence of His love and existence.  I still struggle with this today especially when I am going through my own tempests and instead of walking on water towards Him my doubts sink me deeper in despair and I too scream like Peter, “Lord save me!”  And immediately Jesus reaches out his hand towards me, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”  It’s a challenge to believe and trust in God all the time – especially in adversity.  My faith gets shaken, disturbed and I become afraid- BUT when I am at my weakest I KNOW that if I reach out my hand I will always find His reaching towards me.  Maybe someday my faith will be so strong that I will too walk on water towards Jesus, today my faith is small enough to trust that when I sink He will pull me out.

Reaching out and finding a supporting hand takes trust this trust is built slowly and it’s an exchange between two.  If I reach out towards you will you be there reaching back? If I come towards you will you come out to meet me?  These are things that go through my mind when I am learning to trust someone else.  It’s a matter of walking towards the other person and learning to trust that he is also coming to meet me.  As two people interact more and there’s a mutual exchange of encounter the insecurity of whether the other person will be there no longer terrifies because you know through faith in the other that he will be there and vice versa.  It takes a lot of vulnerability and humility to reach out to another initially because we are putting ourselves out there.  Showing and expressing our feelings to another is something that we have learned to hide because it can bring a lot of pain to be exposed, even more if we are exposed and rejected.  That’s why Jesus reminds us all the time to be more like children.  Children are honest and haven’t learned to hide themselves because they are simple folk.  They look at life with optimism and curiosity- with quite a sense of adventure- and they believe the best in others.  They get angry, fight but can never hold resentment for long.  They specialize in vulnerability.  They don’t see their or other people’s weaknesses instead they ask questions about all the things they don’t know… Yet, we grow up and we learn to hide and to distrust others, to be afraid to express our feelings, to fear being seen as we really are and afraid to reach out to another.  We give rejection such a strong hold in our lives that sometimes this fear paralyzes us.  In God we find hope.  If we hurt each other, if we find that we are not compatible or any other negative discovery we need to trust that God will provide what we need- be it healing.  We have a God who walks on water towards us when we sink- this should inspire us to go out there and get dirty, to get hurt because in the end God will heal us and encourage and be with us no matter the resolution of our relationships. We can't let fear or pride dictate our actions, we need to humble ourselves like children knowing that there's no hurt God cannot heal (smile). That if I extend my hand God will always be reaching towards it.