How do we measure a wave when we are caught inside it? How do we measure a movement in our world — by its noise, its rules, or by what it leaves behind?
This reflection weaves the storm on the Sea of Galilee, when the men in the boat saw Christ walking toward them, with questions about strength, freedom, and what endures after the storm.
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Because where words fail, poetry still speaks.
The Measure of a Wave
What is the measure of a wave?
Not the number on a chart,
not the boast of wind,
but the way your ribs learn to count
when the hull begins to rise and fall.
From a boat you do not see its crown— you feel the tilt of your body,
the hunger of the sea,
the held breath before impact.
This is how a wave is measured
from inside it.
The men in the boat knew that measure.
The sea was rough, the night a single bruise.
They gripped wet wood and fragments of prayer
until a figure came walking—
walking on the water.
They thought it was a ghost, for who crosses a storm like ground?
But it was Christ,
whose footsteps did not sink,
whose voice steadied their bones,
who climbed into the boat,
and the measure changed.
What is the measure of a movement?
Is it strong when it shatters every rule?
When it binds liberty and calls the binding peace?
When it silences many and names the silence order?
When it counts victory in the fallen?
Strength that counts its worth in graves has misread the scale.
A wave is measured by what it leaves behind— wreckage, yes,
but also who can breathe again,
what truth can still be spoken,
what hands remain unshackled,
what mercy still stands unbroken on the shore.
So let the sea be rough,
let the night be long—
there walks the One across the dark, entering the boat we cling to,
recalibrating fear, teaching us the true measure:
not ruin but life,
not silence but freedom,
not death but the calm that follows when the storm is stilled.
Michael Appelt 
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