My phone buzzes. I’m losing the baby, she texts.

Heart sinking, I start writing back to my friend — right when my youngest rushes into the kitchen crying. I toss aside the phone, grab paper towels, and start dabbing his weeping eyes and bleeding knees.

Once his cries have quieted down, I reach for the phone again to respond — only to find a message from another friend. We can’t save this marriage. I’m leaving him.

Bewildered, I lean my back against the wall, my heart aching in a new direction. I hadn’t even gotten to update this long-distance friend on my latest hard health news, but now she’s hurting even more. I whisper a quick prayer and tap out a quick promise of love and support.

While I’m typing, a notification pops up. Today is the anniversary of my uncle’s death, a reminder I set to reach out to my mom and tell her I’m thinking of her on a hard day. But then two more kids burst in the back door, reminding me we’re late to soccer and need to go, go, go. 

Come back to all this later, I promise myself, shoving my phone in my pocket as we rush out the door. 

Jesus, cover it all because I can’t.

Later that night, I’m counting on my fingers all the people who need prayers. Weeping mothers on the news. Families going through desperate times. Friends trying to conceive. Loved ones freshly grieving. Exhausted caregivers. Everyone without enough food, without work, without peace, without a home.

In hard seasons, the life of faith can start to feel like a triage station in the emergency room. Who’s bleeding out? Who’s sick and shaking? Who might be able to wait a moment while we care for others who need it now? 

How often do our texts, emails, and DMs pile up like a heap of prayer requests? Some days I want to step outside and stare up at the sky, shaking my fist and crying out, Don’t You see how much we’re suffering down here?

This is exactly when I try to remember: Jesus is already in the boat with us.

As a child, I’d always pause on that dramatic picture in my Bible. Jesus stretching out His hands over the crashing waves as His friends cowered in the boat. Jesus calming the storm as His friends lifted their eyes to heaven and prayed.

I believed it was a story of a one-time miracle, a powerful show of Jesus’s command over the forces of nature. Little did I know it was the way Emmanuel always is with us.

He’s already in the boat.

The miracle of the story is not simply that Jesus can control the wind and waves. It’s also the truth that God is right next to us during the most terrifying and trembling moments of life. The Incarnation allowed God to come so close to us, to become one of us, to live alongside us — so that whenever storms raged or skies darkened or boats shook, we would know that Jesus was right there.

He’s already in the boat with us.

Like Jesus’s friends, we might feel like we’re shaking Christ’s shoulders, wanting to waken him to the storm that’s gathering around us. We might be crying out in fear, needing Him to know we can’t control the way we’re going.

But no matter what happens, He’s right next to us in the boat.

I can’t save my friend’s baby or marriage. I can’t take away the grief of family members or strangers. I can’t end a war, stop a flood, or feed a hungry world. But the point is not to get our prayer list to inbox-zero. We’ll never reach the end of every need, not this side of heaven. 

But we can cry out to God about every storm we see — not only for ourselves, but for those we love (and those we don’t know). We can trust that grace is at work to calm what we cannot control, even if it takes longer than we want.

During the hardest moments of my life, the best support that anyone offered was the simple, steady reminder that they were in the boat with me. A quick daily text. A photo of a candle lit in prayer. A meal dropped off on the doorstep. A card saying “I’m here for you.” 

How much more powerful and comforting to remember that Jesus is always here in the boat with us, too.

Emmanuel, the God-in-the-boat, knows every storm, every downpour, every barreling wave that threatens to topple us. He has never left our side.

His presence is peace. His trust is deep. His whole life is given for us.

Later that night I sink onto the couch, the house finally quiet and calm. I start replying to everyone I’d been holding close, all those I love in the midst of their own storms. Can a text mend a grieving heart? Can a prayer find lasting love for a friend? Everything feels insufficient.

But then I remember the disciples’ cries to Jesus — “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”—and the way He woke right up to calm the wind and the sea (Mark 4:38 NRSV).

If He’s here in the boat with us, too, then He’s still waking up every time we call His name.

He has never left us alone. 

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