Daily EncouragementNäide

This is a wonderful incident. Our Lord, having dismissed the crowd after feeding the five thousand and having sent the disciples on ahead across the lake, is alone on the mountainside. He is doubtless praying for the disciples. He is certainly watching them, fully aware of strain and storm. Then majestically he goes out to them, “walking on the lake.” They hear his word, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid,” and the wind abates.

There was more than mere physical strain involved here. They pulled against the storm because he told them to go across the lake. But there was tension and tempest in their spirits as well. “They had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:52). Had they resented the Lord’s command, “You give them something to eat”? Did they feel he had missed his opportunity in refusing to allow the crowd to make him king? His coming to them on the lake and his word of encouragement touched their hearts as well as ending the immediate crisis of the storm.

“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). If we are finding our appointed task a strain, and if we are even tempted to harden our hearts because we cannot understand his ways, he will not fail to come to us.