In Sight

A while back I heard a minister say, “Chaos is never the evidence of God’s absence; it’s the arena in which He moves.”

When we’re surrounded by chaos, we might think that God is absent when He really isn’t. In Matthew 14 we read of a time when the disciples found themselves in the midst of chaos as they battled a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Worse yet, Jesus was nowhere in sight.

Commenting on the same story, Mark 6:48 gives us this detail: “He [Jesus] saw that they were in serious trouble, rowing hard and struggling against the wind and waves. About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water” (NLT).

Although the disciples lost sight of Jesus, He never lost sight of them. And He came to them, walking on water. Jesus will come to us in our storms as well.

Jesus, being God, can do whatever He wants. He could have flown in. But Jesus walked among us as a man. He walked in our shoes, lived our life, and died our death. And He came to the disciples on the waves to show them that the things they feared—the wind and the sea—merely were a staircase for Him to come to them.

The disciples, however, didn’t know it was Jesus who was coming toward them. Matthew’s gospel tells us that when they “saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. In their fear, they cried out, ‘It’s a ghost!’” (14:26 NLT).

Why didn’t they know it was Jesus? It’s because they weren’t looking for him. A lot of times we miss Jesus not because He’s absent, but because we’re not looking for Him.

You’re not alone in your storm. Jesus is with you. He’s watching you, not impassively but with great interest and great concern.