Consider this

                “It is going to be really hot while I am gone, so you are in charge of watering the flowers in the yard”.    That is what Sara said to me at the beginning of August just before she left town for a week.   In fact, she even walked me around the yard and showed me every last plant just to make sure that I did not miss any of them.                 “Yep!   No problem!   I will water your flowers” I said.   Then I promptly forgot.   Well, I did not actually forget, it just never crossed my mind again.   Watering flowers is not normally my job and it is not part of my routine, so it just did not get done (Ok – I forgot!). A week later, when Sara got home, she was not happy!   Many of her carefully tended, lovingly cared for, beautiful plants had been transformed into dry, brown, crispy, dead sticks.   Interestingly, those plants had everything else that they needed.   They had good soil.   Their roots were well-established.   Obviously, they had lots of sunshine an

             “Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him… Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he… saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake… When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.   Immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed” (Mark 6:45-51).                        Why didn’t the disciples recognize Jesus that night and why were they so scared of him?                 By this point, they had spent more than two years with him.   They had heard his teaching and they had seen all kinds of miracles.   In fact, just prior to getting in the boat they watched Jesus feed five thousand people with a little boy’s lunch.   After all t