My small group has been challenging me in my reading of scripture to pay more attention to the details when I read – to look deeper into what the text is saying through the little things.  As I’ve answered that challenge, I’ve spent more time scouring the commentary in my study Bible, and the extra attention to detail has really livened up my Bible reading.  God has drawn my eyes to fresh insights.

One night I was trying to decide what to read since I had just finished the book I had been studying in for a while, so I flipped to one of my bookmarks and just decided to read that page.  I opened to the passage in Mark where Jesus walks on water and calms the wind.  It’s a familiar passage, and I must admit that I often skim something I’ve read hundreds of times.  But this time was different.

The story is in Mark 6:45-53.  The short version is that after Jesus had fed the crowd of people with five loaves of bread and two fishes (and had enough left over for each of the twelve disciples to have a doggy basket), Jesus sent his disciples by boat across the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida.  Once the disciples were in the boat, he sent the crowds home, and he went up on the mountain to pray.  In the middle of the night, he could see that the disciples were straining against the wind.  He walked out on the water and got into the boat, and the wind immediately calmed.  When they crossed over the sea, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there.

The study Bible commentary points out that there are no less than three miracles in this short passage.  First, Jesus sees the disciples in the middle of the sea from a long distance away while he’s on the mountain praying.  Then he walks on the water, and then he controls the weather.  As many times as I’ve read this story, it never occurred to me that being able to see miles away was a miracle; I’ve always focused on the walking on water and the calming of the sea.

The disciples thought Jesus was a ghost when they saw him, which, added to fear and stress of straining against the wind, terrified the disciples.  Seeing ghosts was considered a bad omen (when is it ever a good omen??), so they began to think the worst.  Can you hear Thomas?  “I knew this was a bad idea.  Now look, we’re seeing the ghost of Jesus, so he must be dead, and now we’re all going to die in this boat.”  Maybe James and John, the experienced fishermen, were arguing about how to handle the boat in such bad conditions.  You know at least one of the disciples had assumed a crash position, and Peter was probably yelling at the wind to knock it off.

Jesus got in the boat, and the wind stopped.

Can you see the scene on the boat?  They have experienced complete pandemonium fighting against the wind and probably each other, they get scared out of their minds when they see a ghost, and then suddenly it just stops.  Everything goes quiet.  How long do you think it was silent on the boat while they all processed what they’d just witnessed?  Who would believe them?  Of course they’d seen Jesus heal people, and they’d just participated in feeding over 5,000 people with one person’s lunch, but controlling the weather was a new kind of power for them to see from Jesus.  How many of his teachings were they reconsidering in light of this new development?  How were they still failing to see exactly who Jesus was and why he had come?

But then again, how many times do we see God work in our own lives and then still question who he is when we’re in the midst of a storm in our own lives?

How often do we just assume the crash position or curse the wind or try to manage something far beyond our control?  If we let Jesus into our boat – into whatever storm we are fighting – he will come aboard and silence the wind and the waves.  We can come to him and calm our hearts in his perfect peace, even if the storm continues or blows us off course.  In his presence there is perfect quiet.  There is space and time to focus.  We can trust him to guide us safely back to shore and to be the voice of calm and reason that shows us what to do next once we anchor in him.

Here’s the biggest thing I’ve never noticed about this story: they landed off course.  They set out for Bethsaida, but they ended up anchored in Gennesaret, which is several cities to the west of their intended destination.

Jesus let them be blown off course.  He was with them in the boat, and he could have easily put them back on course when he calmed the wind.  But he didn’t.  Even though he was the one who told them to get in in the boat and go to Bethsaida.  He gave them a specific destination, they encountered an obstacle that Jesus overcame, their course was changed by the obstacle, and even though Jesus was physically with them they still ended up in a different place than what they planned on.

And Jesus was obviously just fine with that because he continued to heal people in Gennesaret; his ministry was unchanged in spite of the change in destination.

To be honest, this is both freeing and frustrating.  I have been blown off course in my life by so many obstacles I’ve lost count.  It’s hard to accept that a good and worthy goal, perhaps even a God-given goal, could change completely.  If Jesus is in my boat, calming the storm, why is he letting anything get in the way?  Why isn’t he just making it happen instead of letting us get blown off course?

I forget that the objective of any obstacle is to draw my attention back to Jesus, to make me cry out to him for salvation and direction.  The storm was just another way Jesus could reveal himself to his disciples, and maybe that was the point of sending them out to cross the sea.  From the verses that follow their landfall, it’s obvious that getting to Bethsaida wasn’t an immediate priority.  That’s the frustrating part.

The freeing part is that the destination change didn’t alter the work of Jesus one bit.  They just kept right on teaching and healing folks.

Maybe that was also the point – to show the disciples that the destination had no bearing on the good news they were spreading.  It was for everyone, everywhere, so it’s impossible to ever really be off course unless you quit relying on Jesus.

I can’t tell you how many times my course has changed – the target has moved – but I’ve found myself exactly where I need to be to serve God.  That’s freedom that only faith can provide.  I can let go (Jesus take the wheel!) of even the worthiest of goals and chase a new one as long as I’m following Jesus.

Bible study is enlightening, but sometimes it’s also hard, or downright weird. Have you ever read something and stopped to wonder just why that detail was included? Have you ever read something and just laughed at how absurd something sounds? I cannot stop laughing when I read in Exodus about Moses confronting Pharaoh with the plague of frogs, “Frogs will jump on you.” This is what it says in almost every translation I have read. “Frogs will jump on you.” Frogs everywhere sounds like a pretty gross problem, and smelling their rotting carcasses sounds even more disgusting, but, “Frogs will jump on you,” just sounds a little hilarious. You’re just walking down the street, minding your own business, and out of nowhere… (Welcome to my brain. It is a terrifying jumble of stuff, but it’s never boring here.)

Another Moses story that always grabs my imagination is when Moses must hold his arms up during an entire battle against the Amalekites: “As long as Moses held up the staff in his hand, the Israelites had the advantage. But whenever he dropped his hand, the Amalekites gained the advantage. Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset.” Exodus 17:11-12 NLT

This sounds like a terrible battle plan. Why would the outcome rest entirely on the arm strength and physical endurance of one man? Why is this detail important enough for it to be included in the Bible account? Can you see Moses standing at a vantage point overlooking the battle, already tired from traveling and incessant complaints from his people but holding the staff up over his head? This sounds like a simple task, but after a few minutes, it gets hard. Your arms start shaking, your shoulders ache, and you just want to put your arms down to rest for a moment to stop the ache. But if Moses put his staff down, his people died. Can you imagine the despair he must have felt at such an impossible task? Do the physically impossible, and your people win; fail, even for a second, and people you are responsible for will die. I have no idea why God would choose such a strange setup. I imagine it was to teach Moses and the people around him an object lesson.

Not even Moses could do it alone. His entire leadership of the Israelite people depended on the people around him, sometimes because of his fear, but mostly because the job was too big for any one person. When he first went back to Egypt, God gave him Aaron to be his speaker because he was afraid to go to the Israelites alone. When he was judging disputes among the Israelites after they fled Egypt, his father-in-law Jethro told him he was doing too much and suggested appointing judges to handle small disputes so that Moses himself only had to handle difficult cases. In this battle against the Amalekites, the job was again too big – impossible to accomplish without help. He physically needed Aaron and Hur to lift him up. One man alone cannot accomplish God’s work, however simple the task may appear.

We all need Jethros and Aarons and Hurs in our lives. We need a reminder not to try to do everything ourselves. We need people to come alongside us and lift us up, or rather we need to allow people to help us. We must be willing to admit that we cannot do life alone, and we must be willing to be vulnerable enough to accept the help. I am horrible at this. I hate to admit defeat. I hate to admit that I can’t possibly accomplish my to-do list, and I hate to be a burden to someone else. You know what? I am an idiot. I can’t expect to only offer help without also being helped. If you ever find me being obstinate about this fact, please be my Jethro. And if you are my Aaron and Hur, thank you, and I’m sorry I’m such a pain in the rump about letting you do the task God has given you.