Perception and presence

An Epiphany meditation

4:30pm, and the sky glows, fading to pearly pink, upturned tree branches tinged with the dying fire of the day. As I collect myself into my cozy chair, draped in a blanket with hot tea at hand, I simultaneously collect the versions of myself I’ve encountered in the past weeks, each shade of the woman reckoning with her own limitations, her lack of control over life, time, the future. When I stretch my hand past tomorrow, I grasp only unknowns.

I keep praying the words of Psalm 27 back to God:

“Lord, be my light.”

“Lord, be the stronghold of my life.”

“Help me to wait for you; help me to take courage in you as I wait.”

It is light that I need. It is light that I wait for. Yet just as I cannot slow the fading dusk, I cannot rush the rising of the sun, or the dawning of any light that comes unbidden.

I find myself positioned like the disciples—straining at the oars on the Sea of Galilee, unaware of the compassionate attention of Christ.

“Well into the night, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and [Jesus] was alone on the land. He saw them straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. ” —Mark 6:47-48a CSB

If I’m honest, such straining makes me feel proactive, like I’m in control of something. Muscling through makes me feel a little less helpless, even if it changes… nothing. I like the illusion; it’s comfortable in a twisted sort of way— sometimes it feels like the only thing keeping me afloat. It is into this that Christ breaks in, manifesting his presence to the disciples in a way that is unexpected and unsettling, almost too wild to be believed.

“Very early in the morning he came toward them walking on the sea…. When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought he was a ghost and cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.” —Mark 6:48b-50 CSB

Truly, it is more plausible to assume that Christ appears as an apparition than to trust his willing, flesh-and-blood entry upon such stormy waters. It is more acceptable to keep straining in vain than to lean back with relief when he calls out into the chaos, “Take courage, it is I!”¹

Photo by Marc Ignacio on Unsplash

Here in the season after Epiphany— the season of revelation— I’m reading Fleming Rutledge’s book, meditating on the manifestation of God in Christ, reflecting on smaller epiphany’s of my own. Rutledge writes: “[God] is not the object of our perception. He originates our perception, guides our perception, corrects our perception.” I find myself rebuked by this wisdom, putting my own prideful perceptions down with embarrassment, just as the disciples must have upon realizing that the ghost in the night was indeed their dearest friend.

How often do I find myself panicked beneath my own faulty lens of God, my one-sided presumptions of misguided clarity? How often do I find myself straining at the oars, unaware that it is he who is seeing me clearly from a distance, he who is entering the waters to calm me? How often do I see him in the storm and fall into panic that a disturbed phantom is hounding me, only to hear him unmistakably through the mist calling, “Take courage, it is I!” How did the disciples perceive him as he approached—a strange movement of flesh freaking forth in the liquid abyss, appearing between the waves, a mirage materializing through waterlogged senses? And how do I perceive him as he moves towards me now? May I have eyes to see.

I need my vision of God to be guided, to be corrected as I repeatedly battle my own false perception of his incongruence with reality, or my presumption of his forgetfulness. Yet he keeps moving towards me, speaking to me with his unflagging refrain: “Take courage, it is I!” It is courage that I need, the kind found in the grounding revelation of his persistent presence. In the light of Epiphany I find myself yet again awestruck by the flesh-clothed divine one who so palpably entered the human experience. I can’t know how the future will turn out. I can’t presume to comprehend what is beyond my control. But I can practice opening my hands when I sense the urge to strain closing in, I can invite him into the boat when he appears, and when he speaks to me I can learn to trust his wild and wonderful provision— his presence.

1. Mark 6:50