The God who comes during the 4th watch

I've been reading a book called If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat with the men's group I lead on Wednesday mornings. Each chapter reflects on Peter's decision to follow Jesus out onto the water. It's a book all about spiritual risk taking, about leaps of faith onto the everlasting arms of the Lord who calls us to follow Him to "a land I will show you" and pay everything we have to obtain a "pearl of great price."

We are nearing the end of the book now, in a chapter called "Learning to Wait." That's probably the hardest lesson for me, I think. I am an American after all, a product of the original Super-sized, microwaved, express-laned culture of impatient, constant change. Waiting comes about as naturally to me as flight to tortoises, so what I was reading today (in preparation for tomorrow) really struck me.

The author notes that Jesus didn't come to the disciples on the lake until the 4th watch of the night (somewhere between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.), even though the disciples had been out on the boat since sundown the previous day. Moreover, the disciples had been fighting against the wind and the waves for hours when Jesus came out to them. I wonder if any of them wondered during all that time where Jesus was in the midst of their struggle. Somehow, I'll bet they did, just like I sometimes wonder in the midst of mine. But learning to wait is a central part of learning to trust.

Faint hearts may have even begun to wonder whether the Lord Himself had not abandoned them to their fate, or to doubt the reality of Christ. They are to learn from this story that they are not forsaken, that the Lord watches over them unseen... [that] the Living One, Master of wind and waves, will surely come quickly for their salvation, even though it be "in the fourth watch of the night. -A. E. J. Rawlinson