Day 13 - Monday, March 6
Title: JESUS WALKS ON WATER––DO NOT BE AFRAID
Scripture: John 6:16–25

In the evening, his disciples went down to the lake, embarked on the boat and made their way across the lake to Capernaum. Darkness had already fallen and Jesus had not returned to them. A strong wind sprang up and the water grew very rough. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the water, and coming towards the boat, and they were terrified. But he spoke to them, “Don’t be afraid: it is I myself.”

So they gladly took him aboard, and at once the boat reached the shore they were making for.

The following day, the crowd, who had remained on the other side of the lake, noticed that only the one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not embarked on it with the disciples, but that they had in fact gone off by themselves. Some other small boats from Tiberias had landed quite near the place where they had eaten the food and the Lord had given thanks. When the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor the disciples were there any longer, they themselves got into the boats and went off to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they had found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, “Master, when did you come here?”

Poetry & Poet: 
From “[               ]”
by Kimberly Johnson

                            *

                           And what is wind

but a dialect of longing?—:the high
pressure rushing to fill the low, the sky

trying to slake its heat against the earth’s 
asymptotic cool, its somersaulting cools
against the earth’s radiance.  All weather

springs from currents of failed desire.  No wonder
the wind, when it says anything at all, 
howls. 

                                    *
            O fugitive God, my glorious jilt.

my heart has learned a tempest’s grammar
in your pursuit.  Listen: it thunders up
its truest, its most hopeless, prayers

for  you.

JESUS WALKS ON WATER––DO NOT BE AFRAID

Of the many "signs and wonders" that Christ performed on earth before the ultimate one of His Resurrection and Ascension to Heaven, Jesus's miraculous walking on the surface of the water stands out as one of the most memorable. Jesus upends the rules of nature, proving Himself to be master, not only of the wind and sea which obey Him (Matt 8:27), but also of the world of faith that entrance into his kingdom requires. The first public miracle of turning water into wine shows that the laws of physics as humans understand them do not apply to the Lord. Despite being witness to numerous other healings and miraculous events, the disciples still need to be told that what they are seeing is not a mirage but is Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Rose Datoc Dall's painting, It is I, Be Not Afraid, locates this moment of doubt for Jesus's closest followers in the supernatural ability Jesus has to make himself extremely light, which resonates homonymically because Jesus is the Light of the World (John 9:5). Dall's painting displays a calm and masterful ruler of an ocean that was created by Him and through Him, a moment of splendor that must have been awe inspiring in the truest sense: the people who witnessed this scene were terrified. These fisher folk who made their living on the sea had to recalibrate everything they had ever known about the source of their livelihood. Already having captured an abundance of fish that defied human reasoning (Luke 5:4-6), Jesus's walking on water confirmed that though His true home was not of this earth, He has control and supremacy over its physical laws and limitations. An absolutely incandescent Christ fills the canvas of Dall's piece with the majesty of Creator, Master, Deliverer. "Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep" (Psalm 36:6).

Kimberly Johnson's verses (from her collection Metaphorical God) talk back, Job-like, to the elements, engage in conversations with the wind, which for this speaker is a "dialect of longing." In the balance of opposites that unfold in the poem, fragile human emotion ("currents of failed desire") leaves us unsurprised by nature's "howl"-ing response. Why does God sometimes seem so distant? "Oh fugitive God, my glorious jilt." Feeling spurned and alone, the "heart" must learn a "tempest's grammar" to make sense of the distance between God's promises and our lived experience. In our humanity, fully experienced and understood by our Maker, we are at our most honest ("truest") and most vulnerable ("hopeless"); we beseech God to accept our humanly flawed, divinely inspired prayers of adoration. The uplifting, humbling "It is I" by the Cal Baptist University Choir and Leon McCray expresses that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. We are students of a divine Master whose "way is through the great sea . . . the great waters" and, astoundingly, whose "footprints are unseen" (Psalm 77). Jesus's light touch can only make us gaze on in awe.                                                                                                        

Prayer
Lord, give us the faith to walk out on the waters as the waves crash around us yet never completely drag us down. Erase our doubts and allow us to pass on the love you freely give to those who you place around us every day.

Dr. Marc Malandra
Professor of English
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab