Trust.

An often overused, misused and abused word.

Let us look back and analyse how much we trust God ourselves.

In Matthew 14, verse 22 onwards, Jesus walking on water towards the disciples is documented. The disciples in verse 25 cry out in fear saying "It's a ghost!". Remember, just a few verses earlier, they had witnessed and with their own hands had fed 5000 men, besides women and children.

When Jesus calls out to them to calm down, because it was him, Peter answers saying :“Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” (v 28)

Two things here, they had already witnessed a literal miracle, not too long ago, and they were already crying out in fear when they saw someone walk out to them. I understand that even our reaction would be the same if we would see a man walk out on water.

But, we also have to remember these guys were spending a lot of time together. I'm not saying a boat rocking in the waves, on a windy night, when it was probably cold, is the best time to experience your friend walking out to you on the water, but, they should have, actually, they would have recognised him. Maybe they just didn't believe.

Back to v.28, Peter asks Jesus, :“Lord, if it is You, ....” Frankly, I would have been disappointed if I was in Jesus' place. Think about it, these guys have been with you and have seen you do some crazy things and they still doubt you, after you TELL them, it is you.

But, Jesus? He's nice. So he just answers Peter saying, "Come". Now something even more, for the lack of a better word, and to accurately convey my feeling, irritating happens. Peter walks on water. Nice, right.?

Only a few minutes later, his focus shifts to the very things that caused him to cry out "Ghost!" when he saw Jesus a few minutes earlier. The cold, windy night. The waves were probably getting bigger, or the night was probably getting windier, or colder. It was probably a combination of all of these.

Now, he was terrified. No longer was he in the boat, that was at the most, rocking in the waves. Nothing to hold onto. Nobody to run to his rescue.

And then, he started sinking.

Only, he forgot, there was someone, who turned water to wine, fed 5000 with five loaves and two fish, who had walked upto them on water and because of whom, he, was right now, walking on water.

How often do we, just like Peter in this passage, lose our perspective and memory of things. Things we have survived, overcome, struggled past, only because of God's faithfulness.

How then do we not recognise the person we spend so much time with. How then do we forget all he has done, sometimes, just moments earlier.

Sometimes, we ask God for things, just like Peter did, and take a brave step out of the boat (read :our comfort zone) , and when the wind and waves appear, like the foolish man who built his house on sand (Mat 7:24-27), it all comes crashing down.

We forget about our own faith that enabled us to take that step of faith, and we start to sink, just like Peter.

But here's some good news, when you cry out to him "Lord, save me!", he will immediately reach out his hand and catch you. (v.30,31)

So this is praying that through all our unbelief and doubt, we do not forget that hand, waiting to call you out, waiting to catch you when you begin to fall. This is praying that we learn to trust.

Breaking down the image:

Elements: I had originally started off with an image of a hand, but it felt a bit too distracting. Tried different colors on the image, didn't work.

So, I just took the image into Illustrator and made a vector outline of that hand.

Color:Next part was trying to make the colors work. I tried blue and maroon and all and finally settled on this color.

I feel that it captures the feeling of doubt and uneasiness well, withiut doing too much, almost as if we were used to it, and I thought about it and our doubt and lack of faith in God is often like that. It's there, somewhere underneath the surface, and you always have that unesay feeling. So I settled on this purplish, maroonish color.

I also wanted to contrast it with a sense of calm and peace. Like it was realiable and trustworthy. And what better color than white!