Meandering - He Doth Steer

"And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep.”  Matthew 8:24

Future plans, as your health takes a turn for the worse, seem ripped away like so many loose shingles blowing in the wind. Concurrent house and car repairs kill your budget and revive your anxieties. Deadlines and unfinished projects have you overwhelmed and going under. Inability to alleviate a loved one’s pain renders you depleted and distraught. Where is God? Doesn’t he care? Why would he allow this? 

In Matthew 8, as the surging sea threatened to swallow up the disciples, we read that they too wondered how Jesus could be so oblivious to their crisis. Following the miracle-working Jesus, they expected smooth sailing, exempt from the unsavoury storms of life. They found out, however, that it is quite otherwise. To journey with Jesus is to expect turbulent times along the way. Gale force calamity, while it seems Jesus sleeps, causes us to cry out to him all the more. Christ lovingly uses all things to draw us to himself and teach us that apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). 

The country parson, George Herbert, poetically captured what it can look like to rest, and even rejoice, in the midst of life’s storms, when he wrote,

Away despair! My gracious Lord doth heare.
Though windes and waves assault my keel,
He doth preserve it: he doth steer,
Ev’n when the boat seems most to reel.
Storms are the triumph of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

Thanks for meandering along with me,
Pastor Daniel