Thoughts On: John 6:16-21

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid."Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

John 6:16-21, ESV

I'm not sure why, but I typically have more bad dreams than good, and for the most part they have driven me nuts. I have not yet learned the trick of controlling my mind even as I sleep, but if there is a way I plan to find it, because these dreams leak into my days and tint them with darkness, confusion and a dash of horror and fear. 

The problem was that for so long I thought that these dreams were from God. The fangs and the guns and the screams - I believed that God was trying to teach me something through these awful dreams. The part of me that thought this also would have predicted that, once Jesus got on the boat with the disciples, he would make them weather the storm, just because he was God and they were not. For the longest time, I believed the lie that Jesus makes everything harder.

That lie haunted me for years. I thought God existed to make me jump through hoops, and it made me angry and exhausted. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized those dreams and that lie weren't God at all - they were the devil, Satan, where all horrific and awful things come from. I began to see that my image of God did not add up, just like this passage in Scripture does not add up. I am so used to the story about Peter walking on water that I must have missed this shorter passage in John, where Jesus immediately brings his people to safety. He gets in the boat and within a second or two they have arrived at their destination. Jesus bends time and space in order to get his disciples out of the storm, and that's where the truth lies:

Jesus brings relief.

Jesus does not send the haunting dreams. He doesn't purposefully trigger our fear or ask us to do things we hate just for the fun of it. God cools us down when we are heated in anger and he warms us up when we're freezing ourselves in our own fear. He is a constant source of peace and comfort, and I often don't remember it. But today I will choose relief. And maybe, slowly, I will begin to choose it every day.