When my two older daughters were still in high
school they taught swimming lessons during the summer. Although they worked at the same community
college pool, they never taught the same kids.
Alyssa was a natural for toddlers and
preschoolers. They clung to her right from the start, blew bubbles as soon as
she asked them to, and kicked off the side of the pool just to please her.
Jessica, on the other hand, preferred to teach
older kids. She especially liked the ones who had already learned basic
swimming strokes and simply needed to fine-tune them with the help of her
instruction.
Because it was summer and she was a teenager,
Jessica wanted both a job and a suntan.
She didn’t mind the agony of teaching six consecutive classes under a
blazing hot sun because she considered the rewards to be so sweet.
At the beginning of each class my daughter
greeted her students and then pointed them to the deep end of the college’s
Olympic-sized pool. Then she positioned herself on the side of the pool and
fixed her lifesaving device in her lap.
From her instruction/suntanning spot she eagerly gave commands,
gestured, encouraged, and cheered on the five or six adolescents under her
care. In other words, she enthusiastically taught and suntanned while they
swam, floated, and treaded water.
One day Jessica returned home from her job
totally exasperated. The swimming
director had told her to get in the water with her students. No more sitting on the ledge working on her
gorgeous suntan. He wanted her in the water where the kids would feel more
secure in her presence.
Jessica was beyond frustrated. According to my
daughter, the kids were learning to swim, and were swimming very well, thank
you.
I smiled.
And I pondered this thought: God gets in the water with us.
God has never left me to navigate life on my own.
He's always been there, whether I was mindful of Him or whether life was going
great (meaning nothing was stressing me out) and I smugly began to feel like
“I’ve got this." Those moments of confidence never lasted long. Inevitably
out of nowhere a new wave of temptation…or fear…or anger…or even sorrow…took me
by surprise.
In those times of crisis I’ve been most aware
that God never leaves me. I never had to go find Him. I didn’t have to hope He
would show up. He was always there, and His strong arm always reached down and
held me or rescued me or prodded me onward.
In the Bible, Jesus is called Emmanuel, “God With
Us.” “And behold, a virgin shall being forth
a child, and shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted means, “God
with us” (Matthew 1:23).
God came to Earth wrapped in the skin of a tiny
baby so He could live with us and touch us and be with us.
God didn’t sit on the sidelines. He could have. But instead He got in this
mess of a life with us. He came in the form of Jesus and sent His Holy Spirit
to live with us forever. He is constantly guiding, holding, instructing,
touching, reassuring, convicting, comforting, and leading us with hands that
are gentle and sure and strong and righteous.
In the joys…in the sorrows…on the mountaintops…in
the storms…in the car…in a business meeting…in the middle of a fight with a
family member…in a doctor’s office…when we’re tossing and turning at night…God
Is With Us.
