“Catch me, Daddy!” my then three-year-old daughter, Tarra, exclaimed as she threw herself onto my back in the deep end of the pool. It wasn’t really the deep end for me. The water came up to my chest, but to her, it was the deep end.
We often find ourselves in the deep end of the pool.
Or the ocean.
Over our heads. Splashing and reaching and lunging for whatever we can find to stabilize us and save us from the deep. It is the deep that scares us. The unknown. The forces beneath that threaten us.
Many years ago, when I served aboard a US Navy submarine, we found ourselves doing repairs for a few days. We were on the surface and for a period of time the Captain called a swim call. A swim call in six thousand feet of water! I joked with a buddy that I would race him to the bottom. I do remember that even being a seasoned submarine sailor, I still had some anxiety about swimming in water that deep. It took control from me, I suppose. And it was certainly dangerous.
Deep water has danger. We don’t know what is beneath the surface. We don’t know if there are currents or creatures that might pull us under. I was used to the relative security of the ship, but here, I was alone and it was somewhat sobering.
Circumstances in our lives sometimes pull us under. Life is the deep end of the pool. We have to trust our Father to protect us, for he will.
He will catch us.
The scariest parts of the deep are the unknown and the unseen. We fear what we can’t see, or measure. We have to size things up. We have to be able to see it coming. One of our worst fears is to be impacted without warning. I can prepare for virtually anything – if I can only see it coming. Maybe it’s just a survival mechanism that God provided for us. I don’t really know.
If I’m in a fight, I want to see the enemy. The greatest advantage of the submarine fleet is its ability to roam the seas undetected. We call it the Silent Service. We ran deep and we ran silent. God help the enemy that provokes the arsenal of the Submarine Service. We had (and have) big guns, but our greatest strength is the enemy simply didn’t know where we were.
We were difficult to detect.
Unseen. Dangerous. Deadly.
And our spiritual enemy, Satan, is difficult to detect.
Unseen. Dangerous. Deadly.
And he wants to take you out. He won’t lose any sleep about how much pain it causes you.
He will simply crush you.
And then he will move on to his next target. He strikes without warning. He plans your demise. Even as you are sitting here reading these words, it is his goal to drag you into the deep waters. One of the greatest strengths of his position is his invisibility. But more dangerous than that is the penetrating fact that so many people don’t really take him seriously. He is caricatured. I happen to suspect that he developed the caricature himself. You know – the pitchfork and the horns.
If I warn you of a danger and you think the presence of that danger is so preposterous as to be a joke – you will only laugh at me and assign me to the asylum. Brilliant! Yes, the Devil is brilliant! He is standing right in front of you, destroying you, dragging you into the deep uncharted waters and you are laughing on the way to your own destruction when you should be fighting.
We blame it on people – but the Bible says our struggle is not against flesh. We read Paul in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens” (NET Bible).
When someone goes overboard at sea, they are really at the mercy of two things – first they are subjected to the mighty depths of the ocean and all the dangers that it contains. And second, the rescuer.
It is the rescuer that they must completely trust. A rescuer often asks us to do something dangerous in order to survive. Like, “Jump!” or “Brace yourself!” or “Hold on!” We may be injured, or we may have to leap from one danger into another to be saved. Perhaps from a burning building or from a sinking ship, or a wrecked car.
Inevitably it is the rescuer that talks to us in the midst of a danger and soothes our spirit and calms us. Our rescuer, the Creator of all things will save us from the turbulent and dangerous waters of the deep. We find ourselves caught in the currents that threaten us, whether natural calamities, or the tragedies of life that surprise us and shock us with their pain, or the anguish of spiritual battles we go through.
Christ teaches the disciples to pray in Matthew 6:9-14, a section of Scripture we call The Lord’s Prayer. It was the Lord himself teaching us to trust in him when he starts the prayer, “Our Father in heaven,” and a few lines later he included in that prayer the words, “Deliver us from the evil one.”
Sounds a lot like “Catch me Daddy!” to me.
©2018 by Ben Bounds. All rights reserved.
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