I knew, when I headed to church one recent Sunday, that the ride home was going to be a little damp. The forecast was for rain, copious rain, blessed, welcome, drought-busting rain, and with the MidAtlantic humidifier turned up to eleven, there was no question we were going to get a drenching.
It drizzled a little bit on the way there, but when I stepped out to the scooter to head home, it was pouring. I no longer fit into the rainsuit I bought thirty years and thirty pounds ago, but that doesn’t matter. Riding home in the rain on a hot day is like getting free admission to a water park, and I was actually looking forward to it. I stowed my phone and my wallet in my waterproof courier bag, which I put in my scooter’s waterproof storage compartment, and with my torso protected by an excellent raincoat, I set out home.
In light, moderate, or passing rain, scooters are superior to motorcycles. Tuck your legs as demurely as Audrey Hepburn behind the scooter fairing, and you often don’t get wet at all. In light, moderate, or passing rain, that is. Last week was not that. But getting soaked isn’t the primary challenge when you’re on two wheels and the heavens are set to torrential-plus.
Challenge one is traction, as water courses across the road. When the ground is first dampened, things get slick. Then, the issue is flowing or standing water. Have you ever hydroplaned in a car? Let me assure you that hydroplaning on two wheels is a more…interesting.. sensation. You need to be careful of pace, particularly when changing directions, because the direction you go when you hydroplane in a sharp turn on two wheels is down.
Challenge two is visibility. When the rain picks up, you soon notice that the wiper settings on motorcycle helmets leave something to be desired. When you’re on the Beltway and the cars around you are slowing and pulling over, have hazards on, and their wipers are flailing as wildly as a panicked eight year old trying to escape a yellowjacket? When rain isn’t just torrential-plus but torrential plus coming at you at highway speeds?
This is where doubt begins to enter one's mind.
Whenever we attempt something challenging, particularly if that challenging thing speaks to becoming the grace-filled soul that that God yearns for us to be, there is a moment of enthusiasm, a moment of delight. But then the storm has a tendency to pick up. You commit to a new life, a new path of action or a time of recovery, something that you know will bring you into alignment with a more gracious path. But the wind howls in your ears that you’re sure you can’t do this, that it’s too much, that it’d be better to be back in the safe prison of your familiar brokenness.
The world around us is filled with powerful things we cannot control, after all, and our fear that our humble efforts will be sunk by those powers and principalities can crowd out our hope.
There’s a story of storm in the Gospel, as the disciples find themselves out on the sea of Galilee. They’ve just left a gathered throng, and between the demands of the crowd and the endless questions of his inner circle, Jesus was spent. He first needed that time away after the death of his cousin John, and after feeding the five thousand, he finally was able to be by himself, and he told his friends to go on ahead across the sea while he went to the mountaintop.
The Sea of Galilee is susceptible to sudden storms that blow up, winds that race across open waters and turn what is typically a flat and easy passage into something rather more significantly challenging. As fishermen, the disciples would have known this, and known how to cope with it. It wasn’t life threatening, or so we are told, and the sea was up, and the waves were high, and the wind was blowing hard against them.
They were handling that, although the going was hard.
What freaked them out just a little bit more was Jesus, as he walked towards them across the water. This is entirely understandable, because it’s unsettling when things step outside of their normal pattern, and a dude walking across the roiling surface of a lake in heavy seas is pretty far outside of the normal pattern.
They are justifiably a little upset by this, and Jesus hollers out to them to calm them down. Peter, hearing him, is still a little doubtful. Hey Jesus, he yells back, if it’s you, ask me to come join you! To which Jesus says, sure, c’mon over.
I’m not quite sure why this was enough for Peter to get out of the boat, but apparently it was. So the story tells us that Peter set out across the water towards Jesus. Now, it’s one thing to be in a boat on the water, and it’s another thing to be right there on the surface of the storm.
Peter panics. He’s suddenly aware of his vulnerability, of all the different reasons this just won’t work, and the water starts to consume him. Jesus comes over, lends a hand up, and the two get into the boat. The winds calm, and the disciples are in awe.
This story is a story of faithful striving when all around us is churn and storm and spray. In those times, faith in our purpose is tested, and doubt comes easy.
We all do that, but those first earnest efforts can be so easily undercut by doubt. We know you need to heal that relationship. We know we need to stop doing that one thing…you know what that is, for you…that has continually sabotaged our ability to show the grace of the Spirit. We know you’re called to something new and wonderful and hard. For a moment, it’s wonderful and euphoric. And then things get harder.
The salt of the spray fills our mouths and blinds our eyes, and we feel our hope bleed away to nothing, and it seems as if we’re going to sink beneath the waves. We falter, we hesitate, and any hope we had vanishes like Eurydice before the eyes of Orpheus.
That’s the point, as Jesus folk, where we need to set aside strangling anxieties and smothering doubts, reach our hands out, and trust in God’s strength and Christ’s grace and the love of the Holy Spirit.
If you are anxious and fearful on two wheels, you’ll freeze or panic, and that doesn’t end well. There've been times in my life...times of stress and times of hardship...where I've stopped motorcycling, because I could feel my confidence in everything shaken. But that wasn't what I felt on the road that day.
Whenever we attempt something challenging, particularly if that challenging thing speaks to becoming the grace-filled soul that that God yearns for us to be, there is a moment of enthusiasm, a moment of delight. But then the storm has a tendency to pick up. You commit to a new life, a new path of action or a time of recovery, something that you know will bring you into alignment with a more gracious path. But the wind howls in your ears that you’re sure you can’t do this, that it’s too much, that it’d be better to be back in the safe prison of your familiar brokenness.
The world around us is filled with powerful things we cannot control, after all, and our fear that our humble efforts will be sunk by those powers and principalities can crowd out our hope.
There’s a story of storm in the Gospel, as the disciples find themselves out on the sea of Galilee. They’ve just left a gathered throng, and between the demands of the crowd and the endless questions of his inner circle, Jesus was spent. He first needed that time away after the death of his cousin John, and after feeding the five thousand, he finally was able to be by himself, and he told his friends to go on ahead across the sea while he went to the mountaintop.
The Sea of Galilee is susceptible to sudden storms that blow up, winds that race across open waters and turn what is typically a flat and easy passage into something rather more significantly challenging. As fishermen, the disciples would have known this, and known how to cope with it. It wasn’t life threatening, or so we are told, and the sea was up, and the waves were high, and the wind was blowing hard against them.
They were handling that, although the going was hard.
What freaked them out just a little bit more was Jesus, as he walked towards them across the water. This is entirely understandable, because it’s unsettling when things step outside of their normal pattern, and a dude walking across the roiling surface of a lake in heavy seas is pretty far outside of the normal pattern.
They are justifiably a little upset by this, and Jesus hollers out to them to calm them down. Peter, hearing him, is still a little doubtful. Hey Jesus, he yells back, if it’s you, ask me to come join you! To which Jesus says, sure, c’mon over.
I’m not quite sure why this was enough for Peter to get out of the boat, but apparently it was. So the story tells us that Peter set out across the water towards Jesus. Now, it’s one thing to be in a boat on the water, and it’s another thing to be right there on the surface of the storm.
Peter panics. He’s suddenly aware of his vulnerability, of all the different reasons this just won’t work, and the water starts to consume him. Jesus comes over, lends a hand up, and the two get into the boat. The winds calm, and the disciples are in awe.
This story is a story of faithful striving when all around us is churn and storm and spray. In those times, faith in our purpose is tested, and doubt comes easy.
We all do that, but those first earnest efforts can be so easily undercut by doubt. We know you need to heal that relationship. We know we need to stop doing that one thing…you know what that is, for you…that has continually sabotaged our ability to show the grace of the Spirit. We know you’re called to something new and wonderful and hard. For a moment, it’s wonderful and euphoric. And then things get harder.
The salt of the spray fills our mouths and blinds our eyes, and we feel our hope bleed away to nothing, and it seems as if we’re going to sink beneath the waves. We falter, we hesitate, and any hope we had vanishes like Eurydice before the eyes of Orpheus.
That’s the point, as Jesus folk, where we need to set aside strangling anxieties and smothering doubts, reach our hands out, and trust in God’s strength and Christ’s grace and the love of the Holy Spirit.
If you are anxious and fearful on two wheels, you’ll freeze or panic, and that doesn’t end well. There've been times in my life...times of stress and times of hardship...where I've stopped motorcycling, because I could feel my confidence in everything shaken. But that wasn't what I felt on the road that day.
I knew that I knew what I was doing. When the wind drives the rain into you, and your water-coated visor makes visibility like opening your eyes in a swimming pool, there are two solutions.
First, pause, pull over under an overpass, and wait it out. That works, but I prefer not to do that on the Beltway in low visibility situations if I can avoid it. It's a dangerous road, filled with incompetent and distracted drivers who don't have a great sense of whether they're in a lane or on the shoulder.
There's a second approach, one that works if the road isn't flooded. You want to clear your visor? Go faster. Don't speed. Just be sure that the same wind that's blinding you is driving the rain off. It works, time and time again. So I forced my way into the storm.
The visor cleared, the beaded rain streaming away as rapidly as it landed. I could see again, as I pulled onto the high occupancy toll lanes, empty but for myself.
There's a second approach, one that works if the road isn't flooded. You want to clear your visor? Go faster. Don't speed. Just be sure that the same wind that's blinding you is driving the rain off. It works, time and time again. So I forced my way into the storm.
The visor cleared, the beaded rain streaming away as rapidly as it landed. I could see again, as I pulled onto the high occupancy toll lanes, empty but for myself.
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