This morning I read again the story of Jesus, after a day of
teaching and healing, stepping into a boat and having the disciples row out
onto the Sea of Galilee so he could get some rest from the crowd. (Luke 8:22-25) Jesus fell asleep. Suddenly a storm sweeps
up. The boat begins to rock and waves start to splash over the sides. The
disciples begin to realize they can’t out row this storm. They become afraid
and finally wake up Jesus, yelling that they were all about to die. Jesus gets
up and, Luke tells us, “spoke” to the wind and it quieted right down.
These men with Jesus have watched as he healed people and
even raised a couple from the dead. But somehow it didn’t really cross their
mind that he could calm a storm. I think they woke him more to get him ready to
go overboard, then expected him to save them. But he did. The speed with which
the wind obeyed would have astonished anyone, but for these seasoned sailors,
it blew their minds.
Imagine being there. Imagine going from ready to die in the
storm to idly sitting on calm seas, in the blink of an eye. Jesus spoke, and it
was over.
I find wind storms particularly scary. We have some good
ones here in the Pacific Northwest. Trees fall, powerlines fall, windows
rattle, and the noise is ferocious. But
I’m sure nothing like a hurricane or a tornado. The pictures you see of houses
lifted off the ground, cars – the wind has amazing power to destroy. One winter
at the coast we had strong winds and freezing rain. I couldn’t sleep for the
sounds of branches breaking and crashing, and the fear of a big tree coming
down on our house. In the morning it was like waking up in a glass forest. The
sun had come out and every tree, twig and blade of glass was covered in ice. It
was blindingly beautiful. All of that
fear through the night opened up to unimaginable beauty. But there was reason
to have feared. Our driveway was blocked by fallen trees, and there were homes
that were damaged. We had a tree miss our house by inches, taking a portion of
the gutter with it. Wind is scary.
Being in a windstorm in an open boat in the middle of a huge
lake would be a nightmare indeed. All that power of wind and water combined to
take your boat down, you’d feel pretty small in the face of it. Meanwhile,
Jesus slept, unbothered. As I said, I
don’t sleep well through storms, so that alone is pretty amazing. He didn’t
wake up until the disciples cried out. They were at the end of their rope,
preparing to die. Maybe they finally thought of Jesus as possible help, or
maybe they just felt they should wake him up to face the storm with them –
either way they didn’t act like they knew the creator of the universe, along
with wind and storms, sat in that boat with them. They cried out, Jesus woke up
and spoke. The wind stopped and he scolded them for their lack of faith. Even
having seen the amazing things Jesus had already accomplished, they didn’t
believe he had any power over this situation.
It’s one thing to have no belief in God or Jesus, but quite
another to believe and yet, not quite.
If you don’t believe in God, creator of the universe, then this story is
just that, a story. Miracles are off the table because we live in a system that
doesn’t allow for things “outside the box” to occur. But these disciples had begun to confess that
Jesus was more than a great man, He was God, in flesh, walking among them. He’d
raised people from the dead! Who can do that? He healed people without even
being there to touch them. They had seen all of that. And yet, in their
foundering boat they didn’t turn to Jesus first. They did everything humanly
possible to out run the storm, bail out their boat and when it all became
helpless, they woke Jesus up. They didn’t know Who was in the boat with them.
But if we are being honest, we like to feel in charge. We
like being in control, god of our own life. We think we can fix most anything.
The Bible points out “without him we can do nothing.” (John 15:5) but “I can do
all things through Christ.”(Philippians 4:13)
That is our new reality, if we choose to follow it. There will always be storms, and sometimes
the boat even capsizes. But in the midst of the storm, God is there with us, in
the boat, in the storm, waiting for us to reach out to him for help. Even if
the boat sinks, he stays with us.
I prayed for my sister to survive cancer. She didn’t survive
it. But God was in that cancer boat with her all the way. She had such
beautiful peace about Jesus taking charge. And he is in the grief boat with me,
and was there all through that storm. On a lesser, but still important life
issue, I prayed for a different political outcome this past election. What I
prayed for didn’t happen. Does that mean God failed me, didn’t care about my
concerns, doesn’t care about our country? No, as Francis Schaefer said in the
book I am reading*, “You are not alone in this Twentieth Century (now Twenty
First Century) boat.” Jesus is still with us. Seeking his help doesn’t mean we
will always get our way, and that’s probably a good thing. As much as we think
we are in control, what do we really know?
It makes more sense to seek the help of the Creator God, then to go it
alone.
We need to constantly remind ourselves Jesus is right here
with us, in the boat, and all we need do is reach out, take His hand and lean
in to his hold as the storm hits. We are not alone.
*Schaeffer, Francis and Edith. Everybody Can Know. Tyndale House Publishers. 1973.
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