the swimming story

This is something I shared in chapel a few years ago.
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you."
The young boy sat anxiously on the bus as it drove south on Highway One towards Washington. It was hot, all the windows were open and the rushing wind took the words away as the kids talked about how this was the year they would jump off the diving board.
The bus was taking kids from Kalona to their annual summer swimming lessons. The boy promised himself this was the year he would finally learn to swim. When they got to the pool they were lined up and placed in groups. Young kids went to the Beginners class, slightly older ones to Advanced Beginners, Intermediates and so forth. The boy went to his group- intermediates where the expectation was that he could float on his stomach and back, do a few strokes and tread water to keep himself from drowning.
The boy failed miserably. He wished he had heeded his wise grandmothers advice, "Don't go in the water until you know how to swim," but he hadn't and here he was. Unable to float, nervous and embarrassed he was demoted to the Beginners class, certainly the oldest in the group and by all appearances the most frightened.
The next week another lesson came and with it a stomach ache and complaints of not feeling well. His parents said, "we've paid for these lessons, you're going," and they put him on the bus. He sat quietly inspecting the hairs on his arm or counting the passing fence posts. Anything to take his mind off the upcoming torture of the swimming lesson. "Just relax," everybody said, but in the pool it wasn't possible. He couldn't relax and have fun and not worry. He couldn't let go.
"Save me O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters..."
One night his parents talked, trying to console and encourage the boy. Maybe its because of what happened when you were three. The boy didn't remember so they told the story.
As he lay drifting to sleep he tried to remember being in a small pool in a mountainside home with water heated by a natural spring. Playing and splashing on the side he slipped into the water until he lay unnoticed on the bottom of the pool where all was warm and peaceful. Then he imagined strong arms grabbing him from the water that had taken his breath and made him frantic for air and life.
Was this why the boy could not do the dead mans float? Summers came and every year it was the same tortuous ordeal. A swimming school failure unable to overcome his fear, to relax, and to float. While others talked of jumping off the high dive he secretly hoped only to float or to move to a place where no one swam. A place like Ethiopia where if you swam you got schistomasaisis and went blind, or the Amazon where piranhas would eat you if you dared go in the river.
Then one summer the boy and his family moved to a town where the school had its own swimming pool and the father said, "the pools open in the afternoons, to keep you out of your mothers hair you are going," and so he went with his brothers to face the fears once more.
"At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. With you faithful help rescue me from sinking...draw me, redeem me, set me free."
And then it happened. Playing in the pool (of course at the shallow end) he slipped and before he hit bottom he felt himself float. It was as if God himself had reached down into that swimming pool and held him up and to that boy it was a miracle. A smile erupted on his face as he shouted, "I floated," and even though everyone looked and said, "big deal" he was ecstatic. He floated. He floated from one side of the pool to the other and soon he was actually swimming. The boy begged to take lessons where he quickly advanced. He joined the swim team and learned the backstroke, the freestyle, the butterfly, but with his short legs he never quite mastered the breaststroke. Oh those were glorious days, to slide through the water pretending to be an otter or a dolphin.
One day he traveled with his team to Washington, to that very pool where after four years of lessons he had never learned to swim, and he competed in races and won ribbons. But best of all, during some free time he climbed the diving board, and savoring each moment, he strolled to the end of the board, and smiling he jumped.
"But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved and raised up with him....For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God..."