They had a short row of some five or six miles in prospect, when
they started in the early evening. An hour or so might have done it,
but, for some unknown reason, they lingered. Perhaps instead of
pulling across, they may have kept inshore, by the head of the lake,
expecting Jesus to join them at some point. Thus, night finds them
but a short way on their voyage. The paschal moon would be shining
down on them, and perhaps in their eager talk about the miracle they
had just seen, they did not make much speed. A sudden breeze sprang
up, as is common at nightfall on mountain lakes; and soon a gale,
against which they could make no headway, was blowing in their
teeth. This lasted for eight or nine hours. Wet and weary, they
tugged at the oars through the livelong night, the seas breaking
over them, and the wind howling down the glens.
They had been caught in a similar storm once before, but then He had
been on board, and it was daylight. Now it was dark, 'and Jesus had
not yet come to them,' How they would look back at the dim outline
of the hills, where they knew He was, and wonder why He had sent them
out into the tempest alone! Mark tells us that He saw them distressed,
hours before He came to them, and that makes His desertion the stranger.
It is but His method of lovingly training them to do without His
personal presence, and a symbol of what is to be the life of His people
till the end. He is on the mountain in prayer, and He sees the labouring
boat and the distressed rowers. The contrast is the same as is given in
the last verses of Mark's Gospel, where the serene composure of the
Lord, sitting at the right hand of God, is sharply set over against
the wandering, toiling lives of His servants, in their evangelistic
mission. The commander-in-chief sits apart on the hill, directing the
fight, and sending regiment after regiment to their deaths. Does that
mean indifference? So it might seem but for the words which follow,
'the Lord working with them.' He shares in all the toil; and the lifting
up of His holy hands sways the current of the fight, and inclines the
balance. His love appoints effort and persistent struggle as the law
of our lives. Nor are we to mourn or wonder; for the purpose of the
appointment, so far as we are concerned, is to make character, and to
give us 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' Difficulties make
men of us. Summer sailors, yachting in smooth water, have neither the
joy of conflict nor the vigour which it gives. Better the darkness,
when we cannot see our way, and the wind in our faces, if the good of
things is to be estimated by their power to 'strengthen us with
strength in our soul!'