WIND TOSSED

I got it wrong. I got it so wrong, I wanted to vomit. Like Saul, after the Damascus Road, how he had to linger a little in his blindness, how he had to lie broken and dazed and weighted by the knowledge of good and evil, and how he simply could not tell them apart. How he had to chew on the words, Enemy of God, feel that soak into him like sulfur, like a hell, like the hot melting of steel, like the purging of dross. Like Saul, how he had to disappear for a while to weep and wrack and sever righteousness from his bones, peel skins of truth from his teeth, uproot the trees from his eyes, to see the Mercy in the dullness of his new sight. 

I wanted to plant my feet – put them down on something solid, on something hard and fixed and stone, so I could say to myself, Here I stand. This is my God. This is His Love. I wanted words of cold granite, carved soft as by finger, to lift over my head as a covering, an immovable, unchanged Law on my heart. I tried to write them myself. I took gold, precious things mined from the earth, chipped off from the Rock, and melted them into a god in my own confused image. Be it sleeping or speaking, I prayed for Him to be in my boat. 

I forgot how Jesus knew his disciples, how he knew that they sat in their wave battered boat, tossed by a contrary wind, and how their hearts were prone to fear. I forgot how he came alongside them like a ghost, walking on the water and how they didn’t know – they weren’t sure who he was, phantom – and how Peter tested the spirit, knowing, Whatever he calls me to do, I can. 

I forgot how he stepped out of his unbelief, saying, If it is you, command me to come to you on the water – and how Jesus answered him only what he asked. Come. And Peter did not know Who had called him until the moment he dared to set his feet on the liquid, the ocean of Grace, the ever fixed constantly changing, and felt how firm a foundation it is that washes the feet, how it floats even the one with the weakest of faith. 

I forgot that the Spirit does not dwell in temples, that the Word is not nailed to a cross made of paper – It does not sleep in a book or a box, waiting to be conjured with secret code. The Word is broken body, resurrected Life and blowing Spirit. That Word is infallible. That Word is the Word that is Life. It does not do what you expect. It moves where It will and It does not ever repeat. We do not know Its boundaries. We do not know It’s will. It does not have to answer our questions. It says, Follow, if you dare. 

And so I listen again, like a child, like a beloved disciple, like a tongue-tied betrayer in a wind tossed boat, and I wait for the Voice over the waves in my own soul – the Voice that says, Come. This is the Way. Walk in it. 

This is how you walk in the Spirit – you do not hold fast to what is under your feet. You do not put your faith in it. You do not wonder how it will hold you. It won’t hold you. You fix your eyes on the One Who is alive – the One Who is Rock, Who has Fathered you, Who has called you, Who has breathed into you, Who has poured His blood over you, Who indwells you with Spirit – you say, Lord, save me, when you feel yourself sink, you do not grab back for the sides of the boat.

 

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. ~James 1:5-6