The Boat Tossed Between Wave Crests and Troughs

Our Lord Jesus employs a word of striking precision when He says 'Be not pitched about.' The original term meteorizō—to be elevated, raised as a meteor—carries a vivid nautical image familiar to the fishermen dwelling by the Sea of Galilee with its sudden, violent squalls. The prohibition is not against reasonable foresight, but against anxious foreboding, that wretched state in which a man is 'rent asunder' by care.

Consider the picture: a small skiff now high upon the crest of a billow, the next moment down in the trough of the sea. This is the misery that follows when we fasten our hearts to the perishable. Nothing tears us to pieces like foreboding care. Whosoever launches out upon the sea of earthly occupation—seeking 'what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink' or more refined forms of creatural good—is sure to be buffeted about. He who sets his heart on the uncertainty of anything below the changeless God will without doubt be driven from hope to fear, from joy to sorrow. His soul will be agitated as his idols change; his heart will be desolate when his idols perish.

Yet our Lord seems to believe it is within our power to settle whether we shall be thus tossed about. The objection sounds reasonable: how can a man control himself when the sea runs high? But Maclaren presses the point—the promise rests not in our own strength to calm the tempest, but in our capacity to shift our anchor from the tossing wave to the changeless God Himself.