What a show! I was on a plane flying home the other night … tooling along at about 600 mph and 35,000 or so feet up. Normally I can sleep on planes but this time, God wasn’t letting me sleep. My mind was stirring.

I put in the earplugs for my iPod. What to listen to? I tried some opera and some Beethoven but even they didn’t help me sleep … they just seemed to get me more stirred up. So I started listening to the Ramsey Lewis Trio. The first song was good but I didn’t care for the second so I flipped to the third … vocal and instrumental on one of my favorite songs – “Wade In The Water”. I like the melody and rhythm of this song. It also makes me think of a junior high friend I had by the name of Wade. Needless to say, he got some ribbing about this song.

I started listening intently on my iPod … “Wade in the water children … God’s going to trouble the water.” Wow. What is that all about anyway? And then I looked out the window to my left. A huge and magnificent lightning show was taking place. It was an incredible storm with almost constant lightning. The pilot came over the loudspeaker and said that it could get bumpy. I thought about a plane I was flying in once that got hit by lightning. And another time when a building I was in got hit. But I wasn’t afraid.

“Wade in the water … God’s going to trouble the water.” I noticed something incredible … the lightning and the music were almost in total sync with one another. Dramatic parts of the song brought on big strikes of lightning. More mellow parts of the song resulted in just a soft lighting of the ominous clouds off to my left. It was phenomenal. Like God’s orchestration just for me. How often do you get treated to that?

“Wade in the water … God’s going to trouble the water.”

What does the song mean anyway? I knew it was a black spiritual but I really didn’t know much about its derivation so I thought about it …

In our lives, growth doesn’t come without some form of “trouble”. Maybe it’s our own spiritual or intellectual growth or maybe our “trouble” is for the benefit of someone around us so they can see it and see our reaction and learn and grow themselves. But, even though we may not like it, growth requires “trouble”. Maybe the “trouble” is just what we must do in order to show Jesus’ love to others.

God calls us to step off the shore … to wade in the water. Things may indeed get a little rough but, if we play it safe and stay on the shore, nothing happens. (Except we may get sand in our shorts and that could cause a chafing that sends us into the water!)

Jesus was a rule breaker. Think about it. No better example of someone who did not play it safe. Healing on Sundays, showing love and compassion to whores … none of that was “safe” but He waded into the troubled waters because He knew that there were greater things than His comfort to be accomplished.

Think about Peter. Jesus didn’t appear right at the side of the boat and say “Here Petey-boy, grab my hand!” No, He was in the distance and He said “Walk to me.” Peter had to make the move … he had to wade into the troubled water. And even then, we all know what happened when he started to take his eye off the one who called him.

“Wade in the water … God’s going to trouble the water.”

Life isn’t easy … sometimes folks think that it should all be roses and daisies when you accept Christ. Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Growth occurs in the troubled waters. It may be our growth or the growth of an observer but troubled the waters must be.

Where is He calling you? Where is He calling your small group or your church? What is that troubled water He wants you to wade in? It may seem like a very spiritual calling or it may not but, when He’s calling, you’ll know it and rest assured, the waters will get troubled but it is for good reason.

“Wade in the water children…” Just do it. It’s His work and He’ll hold you.