I'll Take You

In this coming Sunday’s gospel, the disciples are caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.  Suddenly, they see Jesus walking toward them on the water.  They’re terrified, both by the storm and by this water walker.  But Jesus says,  

“It is I.  Do not be afraid.”  

On one level, that’s not a very helpful word from Jesus, because what the disciples need is for the rough seas to calm down and the gale-force winds to die down.  But at a deeper level, it’s the most important thing we need to hear.  And a little girl named Saleena tells us how.  

Saleena was a cocaine baby.  Her birth mother overdosed while she was pregnant.  And when Saleena was born, she was unable to hear, see, speak, or move.  The plan was to just keep Selena comfortable in the hospital until she died.

But then, along came a husband and wife named Alan and Penny McIlroy.  Alan and Penny adopted Saleena when she was seven weeks old.  The doctor gave her a year to live.  Now, listen to how a writer named Philip Yancey puts it when he visited the McIlroys when Saleena was six years old.  He writes,

As Penny introduced me to Saleena, she ruffled her hair and squeezed her cheeks, but Saleena didn’t respond.  She never does.

Penny will never hear Saleena’s voice.  Alan will never know Saleena’s kiss.  They’ll never hear their daughter sing in the choir, never see her walk across the stage.  They’ll bathe her, change her, adjust her feeding tube, and rub her limp limbs.  But barring God’s intervention, this mom and dad will never hear more than we heard that afternoon – gurgled breathing.

Yancey concludes with the core of the Good News.

And I wondered: what kind of love is this?  What kind of love adopts disaster?  What kind of love looks into the face of this child, knowing full well the weight of her calamity, and says, “I’ll take her”?

It’s the love of the one who looks at us in the very midst of our own struggles and says, “It is I.  Do not be afraid.  I’ll take you.”

See you on Sunday!

Blessings,

Jim

PS - To prepare for the sermon, google “Helmuth James von Moltke.”