Illustration results for doubt
Mark Brunner
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“Our Jacob’s Ladder!” John 20:19-31 Key verse(s) 19:“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!.’”
It’s hard to keep your mind on hope when you are surrounded by hungry sharks. There’s something about imminent and perilous danger that kicks reason and especially hope right out the door. How can you focus on something than you cannot see when something that you can see is about to take a big bite out of your life? Times like this call for action, not introspection. Sometimes life’s problems, especially those which evoke fear, are far too intimidating to deal with gently. At times like this striking out wildly, kicking with all of our might, may be the only alternative to being gobbled up by our fears.
Life has its “sharks”; that’s for sure. And doesn’t it seem that they often make their appearances when we least expect it, when we already have trouble up to the chin and are barely coping at that. Sure enough! You can count on it. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they often do and you are left with that sinking, helpless feeling of having nowhere to turn and nothing to grab on to. Kicking and screaming may have worked for a while. Keeping your wits about you barely kept you afloat but it helped. But now, this added burden is just too much to bear. Unless someone reaches out to take the burden, the “sharks” will have their day.
Normally the flight from Nassau to Miami took Walter Wyatt, Jr., only sixty-five minutes. But on December 5, 1986, he attempted it after thieves had looted the navigational equipment in his Beechcraft. With only a compass and a hand-held radio, Walter flew into skies blackened by storm clouds. When his compass began to gyrate, Walter concluded he was headed in the wrong direction. He flew his plane below the clouds, hoping to spot something, but soon he knew he was lost. He put out a mayday call, which brought a Coast Guard Falcon search plane to lead him to an emergency landing strip only six miles away. Suddenly Wyatt’s right engine coughed its last and died. The fuel tank had run dry. Around 8 p.m. Wyatt could do little more than glide the plane into the water.
Wyatt survived the crash, but his plane disappeared quickly, leaving him bobbing on the water in a leaky life vest. With blood on his forehead, Wyatt floated on his back. Suddenly he felt a hard bump against his body. A shark had found him. Wyatt kicked the intruder and wondered if he would survive the night. He managed to stay afloat for the next ten hours. In the morning, Wyatt saw no airplanes, but in the water a dorsal fin was headed for him. Twisting, he felt the hide of a shark brush against him. In a moment, two more bull sharks sliced through the water toward him. Again he kicked the sharks, and they veered away, but he was nearing exhaustion. Then he heard the sound of a distant aircraft. When it was within a half mile, he waved his orange vest. The pilot radioed the Cape York, which was twelve minutes away: “Get moving, cutter! There’s a shark targeting this guy!” As the Cape York pulled alongside Wyatt, a Jacob’s ladder was dropped over the side. Wyatt climbed wearily out of the water and onto the ship, where he fell to his knees and kissed the deck. He’d been saved. He didn’t need encouragement or better techniques. Nothing less than outside intervention could have rescued him from sure death. How much we are like Walter Wyatt. (Peter Michelmore, Reader’s Digest, October, 1987.)
In the mournful first day of the week Jesus’ disciples were gathered in a room helplessly lost amid a sea of hungry Jewish “sharks.” The situation could not have seemed more hopeless or filled with doubt. Their Jesus was dead and their world had been turned upside down in the matter of hours. One of their own had been a traitor and, no doubt, thoughts of who might be next were running through their minds. The disciples had come to a defining moment in their fellowship. They had gathered together but that gathering was filled with fear not hope. Little comfort could be found among such a group. No doubt they tried to be brave, tried to come up with some plan that would give them a scenario for tomorrow. But, in the end, as hard as they tried to come up with something positive, something to give them hope, the spectre of persecution and death hung heavily over their heads. Who or what could save them. With fears and doubts “bumping” into them left and right, little else mattered. Then Jesus appeared and spread His shalom, his peaceful greeting over their fears. Their Jacob’s Ladder had appeared in a nick of time. They were saved. Pure mercy and life replaced the sin and death that had been swimming around them. His hope became theirs as it does yours and mine. Sharks? Bring them on
The playlet entitled ‘The Long Silence’ says it all:
At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne.
Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly – not with cringing shame, but with belligerence.
‘Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?’ snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. ‘We endured terror … beatings … torture … death!”
In another group an African-American boy lowered his collar. ‘What about this?’ he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. ‘Lynched … for no crime but being black!’
In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. ‘Why should I suffer’ she murmured, ‘It wasn’t my fault.’
Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said.
So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, an African-American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever.
Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth – as a man!
‘Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured.
‘At last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.’
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of people assembled.
And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No-one uttered another word. No-one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.
Life’s a little thing! Robert Browning once wrote. But a little thing can mean a life. Even two lives. How well I remember. Two years ago in downtown Denver my friend, Scott Reasoner, and I saw something tiny and insignificant change the world, but no one else even seemed to notice. It was one of those beautiful Denver days. Crystal clear, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky. We decided to walk the ten blocks to an outdoor restaurant rather than take the shuttle bus that runs up and down the Sixteenth Street Mall. The restaurant, in the shape of a baseball diamond, was called The Blake Street Baseball Club. The tables were set appropriately on the grass infield. Many colorful pennants and flags hung limply overhead. As we sat outside, the sun continued to beat down on us, and it became increasingly hot. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and heat radiated up from the tabletop. Nothing moved, except the waiters, of course. And they didn’t move very fast, either. After lunch Scott and I started to walk back up the mall. We both noticed a mother and her young daughter walking out of a card shop toward the street. She was holding her daughter by the hand while reading a greeting card. It was immediately apparent to us that she was so engrossed in the card that she did not notice a shuttle bus moving toward her at a good clip. She and her daughter were one step away from disaster when Scott started to yell. He hadn’t even gotten a word out when a breeze blew the card out of her hand and over her shoulder. She spun around and grabbed at the card, nearly knocking her daughter over. By the time she picked up the card from the ground and turned back around to cross the street, the shuttle bus had whizzed by her. She never even knew what almost happened. To this day two things continue to perplex me about this event. Where did that one spurt of wind come from to blow the card out of that young mother’s hand? There had not been a whisper of wind at lunch or during our long walk back up the mall. Secondly, if Scott had been able to get his words out, the young mother might have looked up at us as they continued to walk into the bus. It was the wind that made her turn back to the card - in the one direction that saved her life and that of her daughter. The passing bus did not create the wind. On the contrary, the wind came from the opposite direction. I have no doubt it was a breath from God protecting them both. But the awesomeness of this miracle is that she never knew. As we continued back to work, I wondered how God often acts in our lives without our being aware. The difference between life and death can very well be a little thing. Miracles often blow unseen through our lives.
A LITTLE GIRL’S PRAYER
One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all we could do she died, leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator (we had no electricity to run an incubator) and no special feeding facilities.
Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts. One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. "And it is our last hot water bottle!" she exclaimed.
As in the West it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over burst water bottles. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways.
"All right," I said, "Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can; sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. Your job is to keep the baby warm."
The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with any of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle. The baby could so easily die if it got chills. I also told them of the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died.
During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt conciseness of our African children. "Please, God," she prayed, "send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby’ll be dead, so please send it this afternoon."
While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of corollary, "And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?"
As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, "Amen"? I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything. The Bible says so. But there are limits, aren’t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending me a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever, received a parcel from home; anyway, if anyone did send me a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator!
Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the veranda, was a large twenty-two pound parcel. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone, so I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box.
From the top, I lifted out brightly colored, knitted jerseys; eyes sparkled as I pulled them out. Then there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children looked a little bored. Then came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas --- that would make a nice batch of buns for the week...
I met a young man not long ago who dives for exotic fish for aquariums. He said one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark. He explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium. Sharks can be six inches long yet fully matured. But if you turn them loose in the ocean, they grow to their normal length of eight feet. That also happens to some Christians. I’ve seen some of the cutest little six-inch Christians who swim around in a little puddle. But if you put them into a larger arena--into the whole creation--only then can they become great. Charles Simpson.
A SCHOOL TEACHER asked her first graders to draw a picture of something they were thankful for. She thought of how little these children from poor neighborhoods actually had to be thankful for. She reasoned that most of them would no doubt draw pictures of turkeys on tables with lots of other food.
She was surprised with the picture that Douglas handed in. It was the picture of a human hand, poorly drawn. But whose hand? The other children tried to guess. One said it was the hand of God because He brings the food to us. Another said it was the hand of a farmer because he raises and grows the food. Finally, when the others were back at their work, the teacher bent over Douglas’ desk and asked whose hand it was. "Why, its your hand, teacher," he mumbled. Then she recalled that frequently at recess she had taken Douglas, a scrubby, forlorn child, by the hand. She did it with many of the children and never thought much about it. But Douglas did. You see, she refreshed his spirit and he never forgot it.
“H. G. Spafford was a businessman in Chicago. He was a dedicated Christian. [There were times in his life when the wisdom he followed was earthly, unspiritual, and subject to the enemy’s schemes]. He had some serious financial reversals, and during the time of readjustment, he lost his home.”
He realized his family needed to get away for a vacation. Spafford decided to take his entire family to England. He sent his wife and four daughters ahead . . . In midocean the French steamer carrying his loved ones collided with another and sank within twelve minutes; 230 people lost their lives. The four daughters were drowned, but Mrs. Spafford was rescued. She wired her husband, “Saved alone.”
“Mr. Spafford was [understandably] almost overcome with grief. He had lost his property, his four precious daughters were buried beneath the dark waves of the sea, and his wife was prostrate with grief on the other side of the world. [Spafford could have relied on earthly wisdom and turned his grief into bitterness. He could have tried to get his pound of flesh from the French steamer company by filing lawsuits. He could have justified in his own mind being angry with God and the world, and shaking his fist at the One who allowed his earthly life to seemingly be destroyed]. Instead, he put all his trust in God and wrote a song that has comforted thousands since that time”:
“When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea-billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
‘It is well, it is well with my soul’” (Hughes, p. 304).
HUGE RESERVES
Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ tells this story of a famous oil field called Yates Pool:
During the depression this field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named Yates. Mr. Yates wasn’t able to make enough on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch.
With little money for clothes or food, his family (like many others) had to live on government subsidy.
Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was no doubt greatly troubled about how he would pay his bills. Then a seismographic crew from an oil company came into the area and told him there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease contract.
At 1,115 feet they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were more than twice as large. In fact, 30 years after the discovery, a government test of one of the wells showed it still had the potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day.
And Mr. Yates owned it all.
The day he purchased the land he had received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he’d been living on relief.
A multimillionaire living in poverty.
T...
A man named Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist, discovered this great truth in the midst of a Jewish concentration camp during WW II. While seeking to survive the horror of this imprisonment Frankl began observing his fellow prisoners in the hope of discovering what coping mechanism would help him endure this horrendous existence. What Frankl discovered was this...
Those individuals who could not accept what was happening to them, who could not make their present suffering fit with their faith, who could not find it’s meaning in their world view... they despaired, lost hope, and eventually gave up and died. But those individuals that could find a meaning from their faith, were then able to find hope for a future beyond their present suffering, and so could accept what they were enduring as a part of their existence, and they survived.
- I love the commercial where a daddy takes his little girl to a public pool with the purpose of teaching her how to dive off the diving board. Maybe you’ve seen it, I think it is advertising Kodak or something. And so there they are, the day begins with them both having high hopes of a successful diving experience, but then as she climbs the tall ladder, and as she inches her way out to the end of the diving board and looks down... the fear of the unknown grips her and she just stands there at the end of the board staring down and then at her father, and then down again. Her father pleads with her to jump, tells her it will be okay, but she just stands there paralyzed with fear, unable to trust her father.
- And so often we stand in the same place. At the end of our line, looking into the great unknown, wanting to go forward, wanting to jump... but fear seizes us, and doubts cloud us. And that is when we must trust in the Living God, the All knowing God... the God who is worthy of our trust in each and every situation. And when we learn to trust in the midst of the Great Unknown, then our trust in God will grow.
- And so finally, as the day moves closer to an end, the cute little girl takes a leap of faith. Finally, she learned to trust. And when she came up out of the water, filled with sheer joy and exhiliration. She turned to her father and said....
"Let’s Do It Again Daddy."
