Swimming in a storm

“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! for my soul trusts in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by. I will cry out to God Most High to God who performs all things for me” (Ps 57:1, 2).

Trials are hard. Sometimes in a hard trial you can be on top of it emotionally, having given it to God, but then, out of the blue, you get hit with an emotional reaction. This can be frustrating but this is how I see trials in this metaphor on swimming.

Sometimes your trial assigned to you is swimming in an indoor pool doing a mile. It is work, but you learn how to do it and reach the end. Sometimes your trial is swimming a mile in a lake. Hard work again, but you are able to do it by remembering what you had learned in your previous trials in the pool, so that even with difficulty, you finish the mile in the lake. But sometimes, you are asked to swim in an open ocean at night in a storm. This brings swimming up to a whole new level. You now need to remember what you learned both in the pool and in the lake to attempt the ocean successfully. Even though it is still a mile you are swimming, it is a different matter altogether, because in the ocean you are dealing with cold, with darkness, with waves that will batter you, roll over you, and sometimes make you dip under their surface with their strength. But, the amazing thing is, that you keep popping back up to the surface to keep going. Why? Because you have a heavenly coach right with you saying, “stroke, stroke, ‘at a girl, now come back up, good, steady, keep fighting, don’t give up, come back up, now stroke.”

With your heavenly coach, along with the boat crew cheering on the side as you go, you make it. You make it based on the strength of the One who is teaching you to swim in high seas. I like the fact very much that there is such a strong, caring God who loves His mortal, weak children so much that He even puts His hand under their chin when they need it.