Although these past few months have been challenging, living with the colossal changes COVID-19 have brought, they have also offered us perspective. They have provided us with numerous opportunities to either recoil in fear or remain in faith. To succumb to turmoil or tread in trust. To bolster own reserves or receive respite. To grow callous or proffer kindness.
In the enveloping waves of life’s storms, it’s easy to become fearful, tread harder, and grow weary. With water lapping at our ears, we cry out for help amid the deafening swells. We glimpse our safety and provisions sinking and attempt to salvage the loss. In our panic, we grab for flotation devices yet sometimes fail to grasp hold of the One who answers our cries and holds us secure through every storm.
Though the water surrounds us, and the swells threaten to swallow us alive, Christ encircles us with His intimate care and love. He makes a way in our hopelessness, our fearfulness, and our exhaustion by offering us his ever-extended hand. He believes we are worth rescuing.
We were made for so much more than drowning in adversity or garnering little gods of our own devising—manufactured forms of strength—to keep us afloat. Once we’ve felt the touch of His hand, the security of His love, the fullness of His mercy, the waves begin to recede. The storm of our inner turmoil is quelled. Faith folds around fear, and darkness is distilled as He stills the waves.
With Christ, we don’t merely weather the storm, we watch the waves of our anxiety shrink. We no longer clutch for the nearest aid, the various pacifiers we use to get us through, we firmly take hold of His help. We grow buoyant, floating in greater freedom, filling up with His peace, fixed in His love.
The turbulent waves of fear, oppression, doubt, guilt, and shame are pressed to the side—held back—furnishing a path through the unknown, dark waters. Such things as lockdowns and limitations, disease and distancing, and finances and freedoms aren’t as daunting. Life’s disruptions are overtaken by the swells of God’s comfort, peace, love, and an increasing desire to serve others and choose joy despite the struggle.
It isn’t that our conditions have fully changed, it’s that our perspective has. And that’s often enough, isn’t it? The storms don’t always subside but can be stilled inside of us. Life in Christ isn’t a fix-all, but a life fixed in thankfulness, palms open to receive both sunsets and storms. Like a full intake of breath. A life drenched in grace and soaked with mercy.
It’s a miraculous transformation—the result of a transfer. One life willing to suffer wreckage for countless others—Christ’s life in place of ours. His death a ransom that bought our freedom. May we not take it for granted, neither the love offer nor the invitation to live fearless, floating freely in the cresting waves of Christ’s love.
Whether pandemics or peace, storms or safe harbors, heartaches or hope, turbulence or triumphs, we can be assured that Christ is with us through it all, helping us do more than just get by. Helping us to instead reach for the more of which we were made.
Blessings to you and your family as we weather this storm. Stay safe. You are loved. xo
“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)
Recently, my 10-year-old told me something enlightening. She said she learned in school that when you cry and your nose runs, it’s actually tears coming out of your nostrils. Nose tears? I was astounded. How could I have lived for forty-eight years and never heard of this phenomenon? This led me to think about all the other times my nose runs besides when I cry or have a cold.
Melanie Stevenson 