As the boat pulled away from the harbour, the guide turned to the guests on deck and said, ‘If you want to see what you’ve come to see, then look for the disturbance.’ They were hoping to see whales, and the guide went on to explain that the best place to look was where they could see the water disturbed, because that was a sure sign of predators under the surface.
I’m sometimes struck by the fact that people who hunger after God are often looking in the wrong places. We expect to find God when all is calm, when the reality is that he is more likely to be found when our lives are disturbed. Why bother looking for God in the first place if all is well? My own experience is that it’s when my life has been most disturbed that I have sought after God, and in the disturbance found the God of love and peace revealed in Jesus.
In a famous episode from the Bible Jesus is asleep in a boat that his friends are sailing across a lake. It’s only when a storm blows up and they think they might drown that they wake him and find the peace they are longing for.
