I was actually rescued from drowning in the sea. The events and images of that day is very powerful. I can recall being physically tossed about by powerful waves and buffeted by the cold wind; I know what it is like to be sinking in the sea for what seems to be the very last time. I understand with absolute clarity how the disciples must have felt as disaster overtook them while their Master slept. I lived out this Bible story on March 12, 1967 in a very literal way. Since then, I have had several occasions to live it out in a metaphorical way, and I am ashamed that I still haven't learned my lesson despite all these years. 

You know what I am talking about: there are times in your life when you know a great upheaval is coming. The wind rises ominously and the clouds don't look right. People suddenly start doing and saying strange things and you know something is afoot. Relatives fall prey to strange persuasions; your health might even fail. The news on television starts sounding Biblical, and there are rumors the like of which you haven't heard before. Your life is tossed upon the waves like a small ship on an angry sea. Panic sets in as you decide that the end of something is near; if not your family, if not your finances, if not your career, then maybe the whole world! 

"Master, Master," you cry to God, "Don't you even care that I am perishing?" 

And you sit in your quiet room and stare at the ceiling, as if all your prayers never got past that point, and the silence from heaven is deafening. At most points in your life, if you heard an audible voice in answer to your prayer, you'd smile and look for the person who's playing a joke on you. Or perhaps you'd search the yellow pages for a good psychiatrist who specializes in auditory hallucinations; but today in your distress there is a part of you that demands to hear what you've never heard, to see what you've never seen, because you are scared to your innermost being and you need comfort and rescue, and you need it now. 

How impudent of God not to answer. Doesn't He know what you're going through?