Walk By Faith

I am currently in New Zealand finishing up the student teaching portion of my degree… Last week we had what is called Water Wise at the school I am placed at. Students head down to the beach and from there they are able to learn how to kayak and sail. Volunteers supervise the activity and help teach students. A staff member from the school was in charge of taking out one of the motor boats and asked me to come with him so I agreed. He is very knowledgeable on sailing so we spent most of our time helping students get comfortable operating their sail boats out on the water. We just finished helping two students in their sail boat when he saw another one of our sail boats too close to the jagged shore line, which meant they were too close to the rocks. We sped over to them determined to tow them away from shore. We pulled up next to their sail boat and the staff member told me to grab on to the sail boat so that he could pull them out of the rocks, but it was too late. Due to the powerful waves, we got too close to the rocks too. The sailboat (as well as our own boat) had waves crashing over the edge and into the boat. The two girls in the sailboat started to panic and yelled out, “We are capsizing!” I was still holding onto their boat so I said, “Take some deep breaths, you are ok, I’ve got you, it’s going to be alright.” (Even though I wasn’t sure that it would be, I was hopeful it would be alright). The staff member I was with killed the motor. He jumped out of our boat and grabbed onto the sailboat. He told me to jump out of the motor boat and hold onto it. The water was up to my chest and me being “South Dakota prepared” for the ocean, was borrowing a wet suit and life jacket, and had no water shoes with me. He started to walk the sailboat diagonally towards the sandy portion of the beach while walking them further out in the water. He told me to walk our motor boat the same direction and warned me that there will be sharp rocks. My first thought was that my feet were going to be destroyed by the large, sharp rocks below. I looked out towards the ocean before I started off and knew I needed to pray. As I started to take steps forward I prayed for God to provide spots for me to step. I could not see anything below and I had no idea what to expect so I repeated that prayer over and over. The thought hit me that this is what it feels like to walk by faith. Here I am blindly walking in the ocean while pushing our boat, and trusting God to provide places for me to step. As I walked I came upon large rocks that I had to step up and over and other rough, uneven areas below. I had the thought come to my mind to change my prayer. I asked God to guide my steps, and the moment I said that prayer I was mid-step, and when my foot touched the ground below it was sand. I had made it through the rough bottom. I couldn’t help but be amazed. After we got to a safe place where we could let the students go out on their own again, we jumped back into our boat and I looked down at my feet. After the trek we made, I literally had one tiny scrape on the inside of my heel that wasn’t even an inch long and quite superficial. I just had to smile and thank God.

2 Corinthians 5:7 For we walk by faith, not by sight.

#walkbyfaith #guidemysteps #trustinHim

~HJ