All Those Boats

“Other boats were with him.” (Mk. 4:35) Day after day seeing all those boats of ordinary citizens in the Texas flood waters, this one sentence from Mark has kept ringing in my head. This is the biblical story of the great windstorm and the waves. We’ve seen the water rising all week. And I see the disciples: “they took Jesus with them in the boat, just as he was.” 

       Who could not be moved this week by all those boats taking people “just as they were,” into their boats to be rescued? They were taking Jesus. And all those other boats were with him. We usually focus on the rest of the story, of Jesus calming the sea and of Jesus identity.  But, for today, I simply see, all those other boats, and Jesus.