Tempestuous Waves

We have just spent a pleasant week in Guernsey. I always feel better for a visit to the home of my birth. The slower pace of life and the wonderful scenery helps to put things in perspective.

The weather was very stormy during our holiday and caused great walls of water to pour over the sea walls. Watching the froth and fury of the sea, crashing against the rocks, is truly magnificent and exhilarating.

I watched a small yacht ploughing its way through the pounding seas. One second the bow was under the waves, the next the stern was under water. My uncle, a sailing aficionado, told me that this is called pitch polling. If I had been on board I would have been praying for death. As I am a poor sailor, the sea has to be as calm as a millpond before I am tempted to set foot on a boat.

As so many others have done, I could not help but draw an analogy between the sea and life. One minute everything is calm and bobbing along happily, the next there is a storm and one is buffeted and out of control. It is relatively easy to maintain your faith when the way is smooth; it is when the going gets rough and one desperately needs a guiding hand that fear and doubt are at their strongest.

I have found that the past year has been particularly difficult, throwing up problems and scenarios I have not encountered before. Sometimes it is easy to forget God when one is in high stress mode. To paraphrase Lord Astley’s prayer before the battle of Edge Hill in 1642, "Oh Lord you know how stressed I will be today, if I forget thee, do not thou forget me." I trust that God is at the helm with his guiding hand on the tiller when I am burdened with anxiety.