Thalassophobia. Thalassa means "sea," and phobos means "fear," so thalassophobia is "fear of the sea."

This is a legitimate phobia, when you think about it. The ocean can be a place of danger and even death. Take to the water, and you have to deal with waves, wind, tides, currents, rocky shorelines and ever-changing weather conditions. You know what lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches, don’t you? A nervous wreck.

When you venture out onto the ocean, you want to be surrounded by as large a ship as possible. And fortunately, Royal Caribbean cruise line has now launched an authentic sea monster. Called Oasis of the Seas, it’s the largest, tallest, widest, heaviest and costliest passenger ship ever built.

How big is it? According to The Atlantic magazine (June 2009), it dwarfs a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, stands taller than a 20-story building and carries 8,000 people. It isn’t a boat. It’s a floating city.

Oasis of the Seas features 21 swimming pools, including a water park, a beach pool and two wave pools. On-board actors and actresses offer Broadway-style productions in a playhouse that seats almost 1,400, while water ballerina’s present shows in an outdoor AquaTheater. In the middle of the ship is a green space called Central Park, which is half the size of a football field and full of tropical plants and 20-foot trees. Walking in the park, passengers can easily forget that they’re at sea.

To power this enormous vessel, six massive generators produce enough electricity to light up 105,000 homes. Snaking through the ship are 3,300 miles of electrical cables, enough to stretch across the United States. And 158,000 gallons of paint were needed to cover the ship — sufficient to paint the George Washington Bridge three times over.

Now if your thalassophobia kicks in while you’re cruising on Oasis of the Seas, you can go inside and enjoy a restaurant, bar, theater or casino. The interior space is "a celebration of excess," writes Rory Nugent; the ship is packed with "glitzy amenities and attractions of the sort usually associated with Las Vegas." Vacationers who want to take a ride on the wild side can even visit a wash-off-tattoo parlor and get themselves inked.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you," promises God in the book of Isaiah, "and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you." This is a stirring and beautiful passage, but just what exactly is God saying here? Is he promising to give us safe passage through deep water, like Oasis of the Seas? Or is there something very different about the One who is Lord of the Seas?

God can certainly carry more than 8,000 people through rough waters, but he isn’t a floating hotel with glitzy amenities. When we look at the features of the Lord who has formed us, we discover not a celebration of excess but a celebration of creation and redemption.

Let’s climb aboard and take a look. The first thing we see is that God has created us. "Thus says the Lord," proclaims the prophet Isaiah, "he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel." Each of us is worth far more than the $1.4 billion Oasis of the Seas, because each of us has been created and formed in the image of God.

"You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you," says God. We are created for God’s glory and formed to be his servants. Each of us has an opportunity to bring glory to God by worshiping him, by loving one another and by using our energy and talents to serve the world around us. St. Irenaeus of Lyons said in the second century, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive!"

But we don’t live in a perfect world. As much as cruise-ship builders might try to create a picture of paradise with their AquaTheaters and Central Parks, the truth is that we live in a broken creation. We sin against God and each other, indulge our selfish desires and fall victim to the evil of others. So we need to be redeemed.

God knows this, which is why he says, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine." The Lord comes to us in Jesus Christ to buy us back from captivity to sin, and rescue us from destruction and death. God’s redemptive effort isn’t easy; it costs God something. In Isaiah, the Lord says, "I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you." That’s a stiff price, but we know now that God is willing to pay even more. He gave the life of his one and only Son on the cross.

So we are created by God and then redeemed by God. That’s the biblical story in a nutshell. Reformer John Calvin, who was born 500 years ago last July, saw the Old Testament as the story of creation and the New Testament as the story of redemption. Another view of the Bible is one of the Old Testament being Salvation in the promised Messiah and the New Testament as showing us Salvation accomplished by Christ. And of course, the themes of Law and Gospel run throughout the Bible.

However you want to view it or divide it up, from start to finish, the Bible speaks of a God who lives by the promise, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you." From Genesis to Revelation, our God is the Lord of the Seas.

Notice, however, that the Lord does not promise that you will never face rough waters. Being a Christian doesn’t mean cruising on the Oasis of the Seas but living with the Lord of the Seas. Cruising with God does not mean you’ll never get seasick. You can still be hit by an enormous wave of illness, a cold wind of betrayal, a tidal change in the economy or a strong current of temptation.

Isaiah does not guarantee that our sailing will always be smooth but instead gives us the assurance that God will be with us, and we won’t be overwhelmed. No matter how rough the seas become, the Lord will protect us from being completely destroyed.

Robert and Frances Belote discovered this in an unforgettable way last summer. They had just finished a lunch of hot dogs and fresh butter beans when a man stormed into their home in Leesburg, Virginia. He came in through an unlocked back door, pointed a revolver at them and shouted, "Give me all your money!"

Frances, 82, watched as the intruder tied up her 83-year-old husband. "I said to myself, ‘This is the end,’" she recounted to the Washington Post. "But God was here. We felt his presence, and it gave us peace, and we were able to be calm."

The Belotes spent nine hours as hostages, held in their bathroom by a man who planned to rob them and make off with their car. Throughout the ordeal, they feared for their lives but also began to bond with their assailant. "I sensed good feelings from him, that he could be a good person," said Frances. "I was praying for him the whole time."

Those prayers were answered. Police surrounded the house, and the intruder eventually surrendered — although he did fire one bullet into a wall of the house. Police said part of the reason the standoff ended peacefully was that the Belotes established a rapport with their assailant. They made it clear they were "church people," while reaching out to the robber on religious terms.

At one point, Frances asked the intruder if he wanted something to eat and fixed him some cereal. He also drank an entire pitcher of iced tea. "I think he realized there was no way out of here," said Robert. "We told him it would be best for everyone if he surrendered." So he walked out the door and gave up.

Robert and Frances Belote encountered some rough waves when their home was invaded, but they didn’t fall victim to thalassophobia, the fear of the sea. Instead, they trusted that God was right beside them, protecting them from being overwhelmed and destroyed. The Belotes believed that God created them — and their assailant, too. And because they reached out to their intruder as a fellow child of God, the Lord redeemed them and rescued them.

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy once said, "If you are not happy with your life, you can change it in two ways: either improve the conditions in which you live, or improve your inner spiritual state. The first is not always possible, but the second is." The Lord forms us daily through His Word. The fires and floods that test our faith and try our patience are things God uses to form us, shape us, and mold us.

Clearly the Belotes couldn’t control their assailant, and we face many situations and conditions that we can’t improve. Job loss, illness, car accidents, rejection by loved ones — all are storms that sweep over us from time to time, and we can do little to control them. Improving our inner spiritual state? That’s a change that’s always possible.

Through the confession of our sins and the assurance of the forgiveness won for us through the death and resurrection of Christ, we are reformed daily. God loves us and gave up the life of his Son in exchange for our lives. He sacrificed his Son in order to get people from the ends of the earth, from north, south, east and west to be one with him through faith in that sacrifice. Through the waters of Baptism connected to the Word of God, we are connected to Christ’s death and resurrection. We are then born of water and the Spirit, and a new spiritual life is worked in us, which is faith.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, as a people who belong to God, we are empowered to pray for those who persecute us, and to work to improve the world around us. Best of all, the Lord of the Seas will help us in these efforts, because God’s promise is always true: "You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you …. Fear not, for I am with you."

Waves may crash around us, but we’ll never be overwhelmed. Amen.