When I Am Afraid
Ray has been preaching through the book of Mark. When he sat down last week to prepare his sermon for yesterday, he went to the next section: Mark 4:35-41, Jesus calms the storm. What could be more appropriate for listeners whose neighbors in the county next door suffered a devastating E4 tornado five days before?
I decided to talk about the same passage in my Sunday School class. Adult talk about what has been going on around here has been on the minds of the children, too. I knew the children had fears and questions.
At Hobby Lobby, I had purchased two sailboats each for my class members (60 cents each; what a bargain). I wrote “Peace, be still” on half of the boats, so the children could take them home as a reminder.
We played with the other boats. We “sailed” each child’s boat on the “sea” — a blue dishpan, filled with two or three inches of warm water. During each boat’s turn, one child sprayed “rain” on the boat from a spray bottle, one child clapped two wooden blocks together to make thunder, and another blew “wind” on the boat.
During each turn, I told the story.
On that day, when evening came, He said to them,
“Let us go over to the other side.”
Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat,
just as He was; and other boats were with Him.
And there arose a fierce gale of wind,
and the waves were breaking over the boat
so much that the boat was already filling up.
Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion;
and they woke Him and said to Him,
“Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
And He got up and rebuked the wind
and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.”
And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.
Mark 4:35-39
When I quoted Jesus’ words, “Peace. Be still,” the children stopped raining, thundering, and blowing. (I usually think of Jesus saying “Peace,” instead of “Hush.” I guess that is my King James upbringing.)
The disciples on that boat believed that their fear was completely justified. Jesus used that fear to give them a powerful lesson:
And He said to them,
“Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
Mark 4:40
Their reaction to what had just happened was to be afraid again.
They became very much afraid and said to one another,
“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”.
Mark 4:41
Fear is a powerful emotion. Some fears are universal from generation to generation — fear of financial ruin, fear of ill health, fear of death . . . . Other fears peak for a time. When I was a child, the big fear was Russia and their nuclear bombs. Later, we feared AIDS, anthrax, terrorists . . . and now, the Coronavirus.
People traveling on the Sea of Galilee in the first century feared getting caught in one of the sudden storms that occur there. When it happened to the disciples, they didn’t know that Jesus could fix it with three words.
Our lesson from Jesus calming the storm is not that He will always protect every believer from every storm. Jesus did not prevent the storm. Instead, He proved His power over the storm. The lessons from this miracle are that Jesus is in control and that we must have faith in Him.
As Ray said on Sunday morning, it is a lot easier to say that on a calm Sunday morning and something else entirely in the midst of a storm. Still, it’s good to think about it when the storm is not raging, so we are prepared when we get broadsided by one.
Our children will face storms. One of our jobs is to do all we can to prepare them.
Ray reminded us on Sunday that we can trust Jesus to get us to the other side. We might have a storm while we are on the sea — sometimes a terrible storm, but that storm does not have to prevent us from getting to the other side. We can trust the One Who can get us there and Who does get us there, if we trust Him.
Jesus trusted His Father even to the point of death on the Cross. God proved Himself trustworthy when He raised Jesus from the dead.
When I am afraid,
I will put my trust in You.
In God, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust;
I shall not be afraid.
Psalm 56:3-4
Homeschooling friends have created this beautiful tribute to victims of the tornado that hit the county next to ours. It is powerful, beautiful, and, because of the images of destruction, hard to watch. In the video, two of their talented and accomplished children play beautiful music in the midst of the broken neighborhood. If you are thinking about showing it to your children, please be sure to preview it first.
A Tribute to Putnam County Tornado Victims