“And yet this story [Mark 6:45-51 link] shows us quite plainly that God comes specifically and gladly into the midst of disasters and the sphere of death. If I were now to ask you when you had decisive encounters with God in your own lives, I should hardly be given the answer: ‘In hours of joy.’ Many would probably say: ‘I experienced such encounters when my world collapsed, when the great woes of history and my own life broke over me.’ We are now beginning to sense why this is so. When the foundations of life totter, when our familiar home is surrounded by overwhelming, sinister forces, and when we do not know whether we shall be victims or survivors in this apocalyptic conflict [WW 2/1944], it is then that we begin to examine afresh the foundations on which we can stand in time and eternity, and learn that we have here no abiding city. It is then that we realize one thing alone matters, namely, whether we have peace with God through Jesus Christ and are certain that neither death nor life can snatch us from the hand of God, from the hand which reaches for the leaking craft of our lives through the raging storm and in the name of which the Son comes to us.”
Helmut Thielicke, Out of the Depths. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962, page 39.
Related posts:
Bible Note #68: Acts 9:1-19–God’s Amazing, Undeserved Grace
Pastor Notes #8 (9/11/2001) — Presence as Ministry
Bible Note #67: God Won’t Abandon Us
Pastor Note #122: Pastoring in the Face of Death
Prayer Note #59: Fleeing My Inescapable God
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