Revd Helen Writes …

 

  For many years we had a family cottage at Braemar in Aberdeenshire and on all our holidays there we had a favourite walk we liked to take our guests on. It’s called the Queen’s Drive because it was Queen Victoria’s favourite walk as well. It is pleasantly undemanding; a wide grassy track sloping gently between lovely trees and with glorious views beyond.

 

  One year one of my guests was an adventurous and athletic young man who said wouldn’t it be fun to come back on a more exciting path. We tried it and the path got more and more difficult until we found ourselves clinging to an almost vertical hillside of slippery grass with a sheer drop of about 60 feet below us. I remember feeling very unhappy indeed as I inched forward, holding on grimly to the stoutest pieces of heather. That walk is up there in my memory with the other scariest moments of my life and I really thought we might both end up at the bottom of the cliff. I looked down just the once. That was enough. It made things much worse. After that I kept my eyes fixed on my athletic friend who was leading the way and I tried hard to always find the same tough bunches of heather to hold on to in the hope that if they had supported him they might also support me as he was heavier than I was.

 

  One of Jesus’s disciples was all right until he looked down. Jesus had called to the disciple Peter to walk towards him. What made it more difficult was that they were at sea at the time. However, full of trust and belief, Peter got out of the boat. He kept his eyes on Jesus and began to walk towards him, walking on the water. Fix your eyes on God’s face and you can do anything. But then, of course, Peter realised what he was actually doing. There was nothing but water under his feet. In panic he began to sink. Nothing had changed except that he had taken his eyes of Jesus. So how do we keep our eyes on Jesus? We can trust that Jesus is always looking at us. His face is always turned towards us and his arm is outstretched to hold us up. “It’s me. Don’t be afraid”. There is never a moment when his eyes aren’t on us. And, as we learn to live in God’s good gaze, we learn to return that look. And when that happens we find we can do things we never thought possible and we can step out of our boat to follow Jesus to places we never thought we would be brave enough to go and to do what we didn’t know we could do; whether it’s ending some destructive pattern of behaviour, or going for a new line of work, or take a risk in inviting someone to explore faith by coming to Alpha, (even if it feels really embarrassing to do it), or seeking forgiveness from someone you have hurt or offering forgiveness to someone who has hurt you.

 

  Whatever it is, there are things we simply cannot do in our own strength, but which become possible when we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and know ourselves loved and led. May we all be ever more ready to step out of our comfort zones and to follow Jesus in new ways and in new places, wherever he leads us.

 

  With love and prayers,

  Helen Kempster

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