Meeting Jesus in the storm

“But Jesus immediately said to them: ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’” Matthew 14:27
We will all face storms in life. It won’t always be smooth sailing. Sometimes, like the disciples in Matt. 14:22, Jesus sends us on ahead, promising to meet up with us on the other side. They had already seen Him calm the storm on an occasion when He was in the boat with them (Matt. 8:23-27); this was merely the next step up.
But what happened next was something they had not been expecting. Jesus walked out to meet them on the water. When they saw Him, they thought He was a ghost, and freaked out. I imagine I would have, too. But Jesus immediately called out to reassure them, “Don’t be afraid.”
In the storms that we face in life, sometimes God can turn up in very unexpected ways. You might be struggling in your job, and a new opportunity comes from out of the blue that will mean some serious, and perhaps terrifying, changes for you and your family. A new ministry area might present itself to you. But if we know that God is behind it, we have no reason to be afraid. God is unpredictable in the way that He works – that is, He won’t always follow the same pattern with every person, or with every situation that you face. But He is with us, even if He is working in an unexpected way.