Confronting Anxiety Meditations No.21: Led into storms
Trusting God no.5: The trouble with life is that it is so unpredictable. If only we knew what was coming, wouldn’t it make life so much easier? Yes, I know we have certain things on the calendar – yes, we’ve become calendar and diary people who scan the page and see all the events, activities and plans we jotted down, completely ignoring James’ warning: “you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (Jas 4:13-15) I think he was just saying, “Be real, people, you can plan as much as you like but so much of the time you haven’t a clue what is just over the horizon!”
Lessons of Covid? You would have thought we would have learned that through the Covid time. There we were, minding our own business, when suddenly some careless Chinese scientists let loose a virus from their bat-investigation laboratories, and suddenly the unthinkable was happening; we were being told to stay indoors by the government. What? This is a democracy isn’t it, we don’t let governments push us around – unless there is a plague at large!
Even a Cold: But it doesn’t have to be a real life-threatening disease (though apparently there are plenty of them in government laboratories around the world), it can be just a heavy cold – and let’s not even call it flu. One minute we are masters of the universe, the next we are sniveling (literally) wretches, feeling sorry for ourselves and taking every sort of medicine possible until it actually wears off after a couple of weeks (if you are lucky!)
Storms & Skirmishes: But the storms of life come in a whole variety of ways. We’ve just focused on physical ones, but they may be financial collapses (remember 2008?) or simply relational upsets. I know of two ladies, neighbours who live a couple of miles away. Not long ago one of them spoke out of turn and offended the other and they haven’t spoken to each other since. Neither has the grace to say sorry and ‘I forgive’ you so they are missing out on the friendship they used to have. That’s a pretty minor skirmish, they can often be much bigger things that divide families or even churches or even nations and the thing is, more often than not, we just didn’t see them coming.
Jesus teaches his disciples: Now when it comes to the Scriptures, we are given just enough to catch our attention and set us thinking. Often there are big questions that will remain unanswered this side of eternity. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. So we have the illustration from our starter verse, following the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus wants to pray on his own and so gets the disciples to pack up and make their way home across the Lake. For Lake substitute ‘small sea’ that is known for its unpredictability and squalls. Did Jesus know what was going to happen? Probably. Did he make the wind rise up to make it difficult for the disciples to get back home? I don’t know. All I know was that he used the situation to give the disciples a little lesson about himself.
Previously: It’s not as if this sort of thing hadn’t happened before. There had been a time previously when they were all in the boat together (and Jesus was asleep at the back if it) when a ‘furious storm’ blew up threatening to swamp the boat. When they woke Jesus up, he stood up, ‘rebuked the winds and the waves’ (note the plural of both?) and calmed the storm, and the disciples, not unsurprisingly were ‘amazed’ (Mt 8:23-27) So yes, they been there before but this is a bit different; they are alone, Jesus is off up the mountain praying. Oh no he’s not, he’s walking across the sea towards them. (Mt 14:25) Panic!
Slow to Learn? You know, watching the disciples, I wonder about them – and us. I mean twice Jesus fed the crowds and you might have thought after the first time they would have clued in to what was happening (especially as they had seen him change water into wine previously, showing he was master over these sorts of things.) But no. Why? Well, I wonder if they had seen the miracle but thought. “Sorry Lord, we thought it was it was a one-off thing, We didn’t realise you can do this sort of stuff all the time!” We’re a bit slow to catch on, aren’t we?
You know, I’ve read the Gospels dozens of times, I’ve read books galore on healing and of testimonies of healing, and I’ve prayed, and God has (to my surprise) answered and I’ve seen healings, but I still can’t seem to break free from this, “one-off” mentality. So my wife mentions a physical need she has for healing, and I hesitate to pray and when I do it is half-hearted. Why was it John Wimber used to testify that he prayed 99 times, I believe it was, before he got his first healing? Was it the same thing?
And So: Whether it is the storms of life in general, or the specific need for healing or something similar, do we need to come to Jesus with that same plea that a man before him brought, “I believe; help my unbelief!” or as another version puts it, “I have faith; help my lack of faith!” or another, “I do believe. Help me to believe more!” and another, “ I believe. Help me with my doubts!” (Mk 9:24) Yes, I believe … but …
Bible Meditation Shop 