Float On Your Back - The Christian Online Magazine

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What are we as Christians supposed to do when the storms of life hit? I don’t mean having trouble finding a good parking space or your kid coming home with a “D” on their report card. I mean storms. Hurricanes, if you will. Tornadoes. Your marriage falls apart. The family breadwinner loses his/her job. That sudden, dreaded diagnosis is given. The unexpected death of a loved one. Alcoholism or drug addiction.

Oh, we sure can talk a good talk. We profess to be believers in God’s goodness and grace. We sing songs in church about Him being our shelter, our rock and our fortress but when the tough times hit the fan, so to speak, how do most of us react? Do we stop and take a deep breath, fall to our knees and talk to our Abba, our heavenly Daddy? Do

we really understand all of the benefits of belonging to the family of the Almighty God of this universe? Membership has its privileges, you know.

From what I’ve seen, it appears that most of us completely forget who we are and to whom we belong when the proverbial wind picks up. We immediately run to our friends and family like chickens crying, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” Now, I’m not advocating closing yourself off from the support of loved ones, keeping a stiff upper lip and going it alone. The Lord has graciously provided us with a human support system to help us. However, our knee-jerk reaction should be to immediately cry out to the one who created us. After all, he knew us before he formed us in our mother’s womb. In Matthew 6:8, Christ himself reminds us that ,”…your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

The problem is, we live in a material world and our Father is spirit. We cannot see him with our eyes, cannot physically touch him and we don’t literally hear his voice. When that thunder starts rolling in and the lightning is flashing just a little too close for comfort we want something tangible to cling to. Funny, but clinging to our spirit/God is actually more tangible than the flesh and blood folks around us.

I remember when I was a child, my Dad would hold onto me when the water was too deep for me to stand on my own. I couldn’t swim at the time, and I would cling to his neck for dear life, half terrified, half knowing he would never let me go. One day, he told me that if I ever found myself in deep water with nothing to hold onto, I needed to just relax, flip over onto my back and quietly float until help arrived. It took a few lessons for me to have the confidence to trust that I could actually do this, but once I learned, I was never afraid of deep water again.

In the same way, when we find ourselves in over our heads and it seems we have nothing to hold onto, we can rest assured that our heavenly Dad is right there beside us, teaching us to relax and float on our backs. We don’t have to thrash about and panic. And as we wait for his answer or solution to arrive, if we quiet our hearts, we can actually learn to enjoy the feeling of his Holy Spirit holding and supporting us while the rain falls around us. If you, as loving parents, would never think to let your precious child sink to the bottom, how much more will the one who made us in the first place hold our heads above the water?

So, the next time all “hell” breaks loose in your life, stop. Take a deep breath, flip onto your back, relax and float in God’s love. He will NEVER let you drown.