When we make ourselves nothing, God becomes everything

No storm is strong enough to sink us

When I was a far less experienced sailor than I am now, I went sailing with someone who wasn’t very experienced either. We ended up in the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a terrible storm. My captain panicked, got seasick, and went below, ordering me to bring the boat to land.

To do that, we had to go “beam to” the waves. The waves washed over the side, and we were frequently swamped, so much so that the entire hull, including me, would go underwater, until the boat’s inherent buoyancy would bounce us back up. Terrifying!

I don’t know about you, but a word I hear a lot these days is “overwhelmed.” There seems to be just too much coming at us. Crazy diseases, crazy politics, crazy conspiracy theories, crazy weather, crazy economics. Too much information, so much we can’t process it all.

In chapter four of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus and His disciples are caught in a storm at sea. Jesus, however, is sound asleep in the stern. The disciples, terrified, cry out to Him. “Don’t you care that we are perishing?!” And then Mark writes:

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:39-40)

This always struck me as kind of unfair of Jesus. Being in a sinking boat in a storm is scary!

But back in chapter three, Jesus gave His disciples His own authority. And later, in chapter nine, Jesus will express frustration with the disciples’ inability to cast out a demon.

Perhaps the issue wasn’t that the disciples didn’t trust Jesus, but that they didn’t believe in the authority He had given them. They didn’t need to wake Him. They could have stilled the storm themselves.

The increasing instability of the world has swamped many boats, and has caused us to be filled with dread, so we turn to big, powerful humans with big bank accounts and big scary weapons. Why?…

(The Rev. Mike Cook is pastor of Philippi Christian Church in Deltaville. His email address is pastorphilippideltaville@gmail.com. Next week, look for a Sentinel pastor’s column by Jeff Johnson of All Saints Anglican Church in Saluda.)