"Where is God when we need Him most?"
My first day of class at Scotland's St. Andrew's University began appropriately in the chapel. After thirty days of rain and clouds, it was a lovely, sunny day in Scotland. Carol and I arrived early and snuggled into one of those wood choir stalls which totally envelop you. The chapel building was ancient and beautiful, built much like Kings College Chapel in Cambridge, a high narrow nave with a vaulted roof; lots of stone and enormous choir seats which face each other all the way down the church. The walls were filled with magnificent stained glass windows, each capturing a particular Biblical story in stop-action color, each telling its own parable about life.
We sat there for nearly ten minutes. The organ filled that holy place and my eyes drifted from one window to the next as I tried to figure out each individual parable or story encased in those bits of colored glass.
About the time the service started, I discovered one window which caught my attention. The whole central portion of that window was filled with great blue waves--rough seas. In the middle of the high seas rode a boat clearly in trouble. The seas were crashing over its gunwales and it rode at an awkward list to starboard. Inside the boat were five men, each transfixed with terror. One held tight to the rudder, three gripped the side of the boat, one held on to the mast. All were in trouble and all had their eyes fixed to the right of their sinking craft. There stood Jesus, on the top of one great wave, with one hand held upwards, the other reaching out towards the boat.
It was a beautiful scene, yet a frustrating one, because the action was frozen in that moment of time. Like a painting, the artist had captured this moment in midair. The story was caught but not continued. Would Jesus save these five terrified men? It wasn't clear as they seemed to wait fixed in their terror.
I stared at that window for the next two days (we had chapel each morning), wondering why the artist had not depicted the rest of the story. Why he left those five stranded souls seemingly unsaved, clinging to their sinking boat. Then, during a lull in a rather long sermon, my eyes drifted up to the very top of the window and I spotted two treasures. The answer was there. At the very top of my window were two small scenes which told the rest of the story.
On the left was Noah's Ark--riding out the rough waters of the Flood, but above the ark were two great symbols of salvation, a dove and a rainbow. The other miniature scene on the right of my window depicted the Christian church as a ship, also sailing on rough waters and above that ship another symbol of salvation: the hand of God reaching down out of the cloudy heavens, holding, guiding, saving, keeping it afloat.
These two little round windows held the answer to my concern for the safety of the five sailors. They told the long story of God's saving grace. They said in pictures what Jesus was about to say in words to His anxious disciples:
"Take heart. It is I, have no fear."
I sat there for the remainder of that service nearly transfixed by the artistic beauty of my window (by now it had become mine, you see) and held by the power of the story. My God, I thought, we are all in that boat, riding out some fearful storm in our lives. Times of struggle in my life when I have had to hold on for dear life flashed into my memory, times when I wondered if Jesus was asleep or if God really knows what's going on down here.
And I suspect every man, woman and child of us can come up with a few times of fearfulness when we have wondered if anyone knows--does anyone care?--what's going on.
We read such a story about a year ago in the Los Angeles Times. An illegal immigrant from the Mexican border was crossing Highway 5 just north of San Diego one dark night when he was struck by an automobile and thrown into the grassy median strip between the two speed lanes. He lay there, injured and unable to move, for three days, partially hidden by the tall grass. And he watched as hundreds of people passed him by, hour after hour. No one stopped. No one saw him until the third day.
That story caught our attention because it is a story about how it is sometimes in life. Where is God when we most need Him?
When we are, as the Gospel story so poignantly puts it, "making headway painfully" and Jesus seems to be "passing us by" when we lie in some median strip, lonely, hurt, ill, and life zips by us at breakneck speed.
Well, take heart, my friends. Look out and look up. "Jesus Saves" is not just a neon sign or a catchy phrase. It is the Gospel truth. That window reminded me