After word had spread about Jesus walking on the Galilee, Rakak, the son of Gershem the Boatmaker, spent his mornings and evenings walking along the shore, looking for the Teacher.

“Maybe if I can learn to walk on the water, I will find him,” Rakak thought, and he prayed that God would make his feet flat like fins.

Day after day, Rakak walked the shore of the sea and prayed “God, that I might meet your Teacher, may my feet find sureness upon the waters.” Each time he waded out into the waves, though, he could not stand upon the water.

In time, the spirit of Rakak was darkened and broken at his inability to walk on the sea to find the Teacher. “I will never meet him now”, he thought, and on the third evening of Passover after meal and prayers, he went to the sea and cried. And he began wading out into the water that was withdrawing with the tide. “He must find me now, for I cannot bring myself home against this water.”

Soon, from the shore, the voice of a man called to him.

“Rakak, come here to me!” The tide reversed its direction and pushed Rakak back inland, to the man on the shore.

“My child, you do not need to find me walking on the sea, because I am looking for you here, on the shore, where you are.”

Rakak heard the words of the Teacher and sitting against him, he cried.

“I have come to find those who seek me with their hearts, and not with fin feet. Rest and talk with me.”

The Teacher sat and talked with Rakak by the sea, and Rakak was filled with peace.

Before he left to return to his disciples, he called a white dove to land on Rakak’s shoulder. “I am always with you.”

Rakak was encouraged, and he grew up to become a strong man, and the dove, except for three days, followed Rakak wherever he went every day of his life as a reminder of God’s presence with him.