Toiling in the Dark

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary, a theologian, and a prolific writer. He wrote the following in his devotional book Victorious Living about how the coming of the Lord Jesus changes everything: His living presence provides the victorious living that we have striven so long in vain for:

"We must get clear this whole matter of whether the Christian way will work before we can go on to 'victorious living,' for as long as we have the suspicion lurking in our minds that we are about something that cannot be done, that the universe won't back it, there is a paralysis at the center. On the other hand, if we are sure that the sum total of things is behind our acting, then our wills are steeled to do the hitherto impossible.

"It was said of the disciples that they were toiling in rowing in the dark and getting nowhere. The wind and the waves were against them and the whole thing was ending in futility. Then Jesus came. They cried out against Him, in fear that He was a ghost. But finally they took Him in, and 'immediately the ship was at the land whither they were going.' Is that the history of our lives? We strive for goals we cannot reach. The whole thing ends in futility--a toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. The sense of meaningless striving is upon us. We are 'up against it.' And everything is very dark. Life is too much for us. Then Jesus comes and we are afraid of Him--He is ghostly, unnatural, and will demand the unnatural and impossible. This is our first reaction. But finally we let Him in--and, lo, we are at the very place we were striving to reach--we are at the land whither we were going! This is the very way it works.

"But there is no doubt that we are afraid of Jesus. It was said that when Jesus came, Herod, when he heard it, 'was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.' Troubled at the coming of the Deliverer! They were naturalized in their own lostness. But should the dynamo be afraid of the coming of electricity? The flower at the coming of the sunshine? The heart at the coming of love? Should life be afraid of the coming of Life?"