Finding Rest and Hope Through Intentional LivingSample

Walking on Water

When Jesus called Peter to come to him across the water, Peter, for one brief, glorious moment, remembered how and strode with ease across the lake. This is how we are meant to be, and then we forget, and we sink. But if we cry out for help (as Peter did) we will be pulled out of the water; we won’t drown. And if we listen, we will hear; and if we look, we will see. The impossible still happens to us…sometimes when we are so tired that inadvertently we let down all the barriers we have built up. We lose our adult skepticism and become once again children who can walk down their grandmother’s winding stairs without touching.

It is one of those impossibilities I believe in; and in believing, my own feet touch the surface of the lake, and I go to meet him, like Peter, walking on water. But only if I die first, only if I am willing to die. I am mortal, flawed, trapped in my own skin, my own barely used brain, I do not understand this death, but I am learning to trust it. Only through this death can come the glory of resurrection; only through this death can come birth. And I cannot do it myself. It is not easy to think of any kind of death as a gift, but it is prefigured for us in the mighty acts of Creation and Incarnation; in Crucifixion and Resurrection.

—Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water 

Reflection: Where would you place yourself in the story of Peter walking on water in Matthew 14? Are you running across the water to Jesus? Just starting to doubt as you feel the waves at your feet? Still on the boat? Spend some time bringing that image to God and asking Him what He wants to say to you right now.

Prayer: Lord, you call me to die to myself. Only then I will find true life. You have shown me this in your own life and resurrection. Help me to be a child again, ready to surrender, to trust, to believe, even when I do not understand. Amen.