It is I

The disciples were exactly where Jesus had sent them — He had constrained them to get into the boat — and the storm found them anyway. It was the fourth watch, the coldest hour before dawn, and when help finally came, walking on the sea, they screamed. They took their rescue for a ghost.

It is worth sitting with that: the thing that terrified them most that night was Jesus approaching. Fear had so rearranged their seeing that the Helper looked like a horror. We do the same with the approaching thing we cannot identify — the change, the diagnosis, the disruption — certain it is a ghost, before we have heard it speak.

And then He speaks, straightway — immediately, before anything else: Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. The centre of the sentence is the comfort: it is I. Not “the storm is over” — it wasn’t, yet. The presence precedes the calm. Whatever is walking toward you across this season’s water, let it get close enough to hear its voice before you name it a ghost. It may be Him.