PRAYING FOR WET FEET

As Christians caught between the cross and the fetching home we face an overwhelming sense of vulnerability to life: Things break, jobs are lost, relationships falter, health deteriorates, tragedy strikes, and the best laid plans of mice and men fail. Most of us “Ordinary Joes” who have become rich in God’s eternal promises are, at any moment, only a few steps away from serious hardship. Let two or three bad things happen at the same time, loss of income, serious illness, etc, and we could be “on the street.” This vulnerability produces worry, a synonym for fear, the very antithesis of trust. So much is beyond our control, and we do not know how God will fix our problems, calm our storms. Recognizing our vulnerability should foster dependence on God, should because it would if we could depend upon God to do what we want Him to do. But God He is God don’t you know, He expects our willingness not to have what He is not willing to give. He prioritizes our transformation over our “self” interests, to prepare us for the future He is growing us into, and expects us to trust that His judgment of what is good for us is better than ours. 

As we clutch the hand of the one who calmed the raging sea we realize this is less a remedy than a forced conclusion, for to whom shall we go, only Jesus has the words of eternal life. Trust of the “Though He slay me” kind is tough trust, for He just might. And this is the essence of our vulnerability, our worry and fretting that robs us of our peace and joy, He just might. He just might fix our problem in a way we don’t like with the out working of good qualified within His purposes and not our desires. It does little good to speak here of the Apostle Paul’s thorn experience, his so called “light afflictions”: If we could take pleasure in sickness, difficulties, hardships, persecution, troubles, distresses and adversity – “Pain” as C.S. Lewis so appropriately labeled it -- boasting, yes boasting, in the divine strength the pressures on our life produced, there would be no need to write this, for everyone would be too busy walking on water to read it. And yet, this is the ‘high ground”, the gold standard for ordinary Christian earth-life, well up the spiritual growth curve called perfection. 

Paul received up-front revelation of the suffering God had planned for him, and was fast-tracked through exponential spiritual growth to demo the life we should emulate, residing a few clicks up the curve from Ordinary Joes. The very things that flood us with anxiety will, as we submit to God’s sovereignty, grow us into the gold standard, destroying fear in its wake. For we know – We Know -- the pressures of life produce patient unswerving endurance, molding our character into Christlikeness and fertilizing our hope with joy and confidence. And this hope, this expectancy of our divine eternal destiny, is a sure and steadfast anchor for our soul, our sheltering impetus during the storm that keeps our mindset focused on things above. This has been God’s purpose all along, to steady us with the “Blessed Hope” of His calling as He grows us into Himself, into perfection, so we too can one day walk on water.

“THAT YOU MAY BE PERFECT AND COMPLETE, LACKING NOTHING “