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‘Why did I do that?’

By Father Dennis Meinen
View from the scooter

Two of my four brothers retired from the military. I was in the Coast Guard for four years. Why didn't I make it a career? Probably the first night in boot camp when the Company Commander (Drill Sergeant) came into our barracks and in no uncertain terms told us he was coming back sometime in the middle of the night and he would find out what we were made of. (I thought he was referring to the fact that we were made in God’s Image and Likeness.) He never came back, but who slept?

Have you ever been in a situation you regretted or had cause to doubt your sanity? The 1st night in boot camp was like that. Now I would probably think of 1 Kings, Chapter 19 when the Prophet Elijah pleaded with God to take his life. If God won’t, the Queen Jezebel certainly would since he killed over 400 of her false prophets out of loyalty to the One, True God.

Or have you ever felt like you were sinking? Simon Peter knew that feeling. In Matthew 14:28-31 Peter also found himself in a tense situation. Having forsaken the relative safety of a small boat, he suddenly realized that he was standing on the middle of the deep lake in a windstorm. Imagine the look of terror in his eyes. If a sound could come from his throat it had to be, “Why did I do that? And as fear overtook him, he found himself in real danger of ending up at the bottom of the lake! Peter loses sight of Lord and begins to sink. How did each story end?

•       Elijah found that when he was willing to make the journey to the sacred mountain, the Lord would come to him in a gentle whispering sound.

•        Peter found out that when was willing to come to Jesus on the water, remarkable things would happen. Don’t you think he would have made that journey to Jesus if he kept his focus on the Lord? At any rate, the Lord rescued him from “sinking like a stone!"

“Crises” by definition is a point of transition, a moment when the old ways of acting and solving problems no longer work and new ones have not yet been discovered. It is turning point for a better or for worse. Simon Peter and Elijah would tell us that it is in these moments that God will speak to us. But, when God appears to us in the midst of our troubles we can usually count on being called out of that nice safe place we have found to wait out the storm as Elijah and Peter did. The challenge for us is to risk making that walk of faith, and trust in God who calls us. We may just find that our lives will change drastically.