Seeing the Wind

Peter walked on the water. 

You know the scene. It’s one of the more popular stories in the Gospels. You may have just read it again this past week, in Matthew 14:22–33.

After feeding the five thousand, Jesus instructed his disciples to board their boat for the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Rather than boarding with them, Jesus dismissed the crowds and got away for solitude and prayer. When evening came, and by the time Jesus wanted to rejoin the disciples, they were a long way off the shore. Jesus, therefore, “came to them, walking on the sea” (Matthew 14:25).

What happens next had never happened before, nor since. 

The disciples see Jesus walking on the water, coming to them, and they are terrified. They think it’s a ghost (because how can a real-life man, in flesh and blood, walk on water?). Well, Jesus, knowing their fear, says, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

Do you think that helped? Did the disciples suddenly catch their breath and then think, “No worries, fellas. It’s just Rabbi, walking on water.”

Peter, at least, was incredulous toward this ghost-like figure. “Lord,” Peter speaks up, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (14:28). In other words, Peter asks this ghost(?) to prove himself as Jesus by bending natural law and making Peter, too, walk atop the water. 

Jesus tells him to come on. 

So Peter steps out onto the water, and he actually walks on it. “Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus” (verse 29).

“But when we saw the wind.” 

Everything was going well until this moment. Peter saw the wind and it made him afraid. The wind made Peter afraid. Isn’t that interesting? You mean, it wasn’t walking on water(!) that made Peter nervous? It wasn’t drowning in the sea? Matthew says he became afraid when he saw the wind. 

Now there are a few things we might learn from this. An easy one is that any time we take our eyes off Jesus we are bound to sink. Remember that. But another lesson has to do with that wind. 

How’d the wind make Peter scared when he was already walking on water? Peter has already seen Jesus command the waters and the wind (Matthew 8:23–27). If the waters were no match for Jesus, how could the wind pose a threat?

Why the wind?

I wonder if it was the surprise of it. I doubt it was that Peter thought the wind was stronger than Jesus. We know he didn’t because he called out to Jesus to save him — from the wind and the waves! And Jesus did! So Peter knew Jesus’s power.

But I wonder if Peter was surprised that the wind continued to blow as he walked on the water. Perhaps — and this a big, poetic perhaps — but perhaps Peter thought that because he was already taking one big step of faith that everything else would just comply. He was risking his life to follow the invitation of Jesus. He had stepped out on the water. And maybe he assumed that on that path of obedience and radical risk-taking that nothing else could go wrong, that everything would just fall into place. He was doing this miraculous thing answering the call of Jesus, and yet the wind still blew.

Our obedience to Jesus, even in the biggest, most ultimate ways, doesn’t mean everything else in life is red carpets and cheesecake. We want to be totally surrendered to God — to step out on the water — but the challenges will still come. The wind is still a thing, and we should expect to see it. And when we do, we don’t have to be afraid. Because Jesus is still there, too.

“Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him…” (14:31)