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One of the things I’ve learned I need is music in my life, so when I’m working, I’ll have often some music playing, usually from one of those free internet music services.
This week I looked down at one song. I can’t say it was my favorite thing to listen to, but I loved the title. It was called “Lost, Scared, and Tired”. I thought, “yeah, I get that.”
Many of you may be feeling this way. Lost. Scared. Tired. Feeling that way might make it hard to realize where God is right now. It might even make it hard to hold onto your faith.
Here’s where Peter enters, as usual. Whenever it comes to the stupid things to do, the things we don’t want to admit we do or say too, you can count on Peter.
There the Disciples are, on a boat with the winds about them. They think they see a ghost. Instead, they discover Jesus can walk on water.
Peter, of course, decides that he can try this too, and he does until he begins to get scared by the winds. He starts to sink, calling out for help.
The thing is that Jesus is right there with him. Yes, Peter maybe falling, and yes, Peter maybe doing so only out of his own stupidity and sudden lack of faith. Yet Jesus is still right there, ready to pull him back up again.
It is as Paul puts it to the Romans, quoting Deuteronomy 30:14: “the word is very near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
In other words, when we’re lost, scared, and tired or when our faith seems to fail us and we sink into the mire, God is there to pick us back up again. God is always there, even when we don’t realize it. God is always there, even when we forget that fact.
The comfort we have is that we are not the only ones who fall sometimes. We should never look unfavorably at Peter in his many failures because when we really start to examine ourselves, we find that, more often than not, we are very much like Peter too.
We also have the comfort that we are not the only ones seeking God right now. During the first week of online services during this Pandemic, there were over 600 people who viewed the service I led, well over double the Baptized Members (not the average Sunday attenders, everyone on the books) of Resurrection. At St. Michael’s, we had 270 for that same service, an extraordinary number for our church. It’s a sign that people are very much looking for God in this time of crisis, and that should give us hope.
It should give us hope because God is right there, ready to be found. God is there with his hand outstretched, waiting for us. So when we are lost, scared, and tired, and when we seem to be sinking from a lack of faith, we have nothing to worry about because God is there to pick us back up. God is there to help us in these troubled times and always.