This week I was set up at the breakfast table as usual, reading the Bible to my son over wheat-bix. We read a bit of the Bible together every day and this particular day we read about Jesus calming the storm.
It’s a story that’s familiar to most of us. Jesus and his disciples leave the crowds on one side of the lake, get it a boat, to head to the other side. It appears to be a pretty standard process. Until, that is, a massive squall comes up, threatening them with death. Where is Jesus in all this? Asleep on a cushion (I think the presence of the cushion is one of my favourite details in this story).
My son and I have read this story a number of times before. He loves this story. He loves the drama of the storm, and he finds it funny that Jesus is asleep on a cushion.
How quickly the storm comes up. One moment they are in transit, the next, chaos and the threat of death surrounds them. And, like never before, this resonated with me.
But as I read this story with him, a part of the story struck me in a way I have never experienced before. It struck me how quickly the storm comes up. We have this sense that it comes out of no-where. One moment they are in transit, the next, chaos and the threat of death surrounds them. And, like never before, this resonated with me.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was going about my usual routine: I was catching the train in to the city, dropping the kids off at day care, heading-in to work, seeing my colleagues, heading to the same coffee shops that I know and love, hitting the treadmill at the gym. And then, out of nowhere, my life is in chaos. I’m juggling kids and work; I’m working hard to get church up online; I’m breaking it to my son that he can no longer play at the playground that he loves to play in every day—that he can’t have play dates, that we can’t go to church together.
Of course, in addition to the chaos, out of nowhere, is a feeling that death surrounds. The shadow of death is always looming over us all, but as I scroll the news on my phone, death is everywhere. I read of thousands all around the world dying from coronavirus, and when it comes to our own country, our own cities, death is knocking on the door. I look down the barrel to the coming months and I am hoping and praying that our healthcare system can cope with what is about to hit it. Every so often my mind turns to my own family—my children, my husband, and myself—and wonder what would happen if death or serious illness was something that came our way.
Jesus Asleep
What is particularly striking about the story of Jesus calming the storm—so much so that it makes my son laugh—is the contrast of the chaos with Jesus’ calm. The disciples are threatened with death, and Jesus is asleep … on a cushion. Here are two contrasting, parallel worlds existing in the same picture. And it is this contrast which gives rise to the disciples’ question to Jesus: Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’ That is, ‘If you are really in control, and your calmness signifies that, then why aren’t you intervening here?’ This is a call for salvation. A call that I too have directed to Jesus over the last couple of weeks. I have prayed for deliverance for our nation, for our world. I have prayed for a vaccine. I have prayed for this to just go away so that my life can just go back to normal. I have prayed for the chaos to be brought to calm.
How did Jesus respond to their call? He calmed the chaos. He bought death and disorder to submission. The answer to the discples’ question—‘don’t you care?’—is ‘Yes’.
But what does Jesus care and calm mean for us in this time? I have prayed for Jesus to calm the chaos, but coronavirus appears to be something which we will be managing for some time. When social distancing measures are removed, I envisage there will be no dramatic moment when the all the doors to cafes, cinemas, churches, workplaces, playgrounds fly open and we all coming running back in, celebrating a dramatic moment of calm.
Those who are in Christ know that a day will come when all chaos, death, and disorder will be stilled and silenced. We look forward to the day when Christ will return and bring his people into the new order of things, where God will dwell with his people, wipe away there tears, and there will no longer be any sea.
The Calm for Now
But Christianity is not just about waiting for the Kingdom and the calm to come. Jesus’ care and calm is relevant for us now.
When I first read this story of Jesus calming the storm to my son, the first connection I made was the storm of coronavirus. It’s disruption to the norm, it’s unsettling nature, the chaos it wreaks on our health system, livelihood, and social connectedness, it’s very real threat of death. But as coronavirus has continued to have its way, what I have experienced is something even more deep and more disturbing. It’s not so much the case out there, it’s the chaos in here—the chaos of my own heart.
As coronavirus has continued to have its way, what I have experienced is something even more deep and more disturbing—the chaos of my own heart. My boat has been rocked. How have I responded? Chaotically.
My boat has been rocked. How have I responded? Chaotically. In the face of a storm, out of my fear and frustration and anxiety, there have been moments where I have been increasingly impatient with my kids, insensitive to my husband as we struggle to work out a new normal, envious of other peoples’ situations whose life circumstance seem less chaotic than mine in this time, angry things not being how I hoped or planned them to be. It has also bought out the storm in others. The storm which causes people to enter into physical fights over toilet paper, the storm which gives rise to blame.
What did Jesus say to his disciples after silencing the storm: ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ The eyes of the disciples were fixed on the storm out there. Where was Jesus looking? At their hearts, asking their chaos to submit to his calm and to know his care.
As I consider the chaos within, it is comforting to me that Jesus is in the business of quelling storms, of bringing chaos into submission to his calm. He brings faith where there is fear, patience where there is impatience, love where there is envy, and strength when I am weak. Come Lord Jesus, come. Speak to my heart: ‘Be still’.
