Do not be afraid

Matt 8:23-27

23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ 26 And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’

The language of vs. 23 is noteworthy given the discussion immediately before it. The implication is that those who got into the boat with Jesus were those who were willing to put following Jesus above personal comfort and any other loyalty in their lives.

Jesus, exhausted by responding to the crowds, feel asleep and was so sound asleep that even the storm did not wake him. The Sea of Galilee (we would call it a lake), is quite shallow so when a big wind blows down the valley and on to the lake (usually from the north) the lake turns big waves and white caps very quickly. Even though a number of the disciples had lived on the lake their entire lives, this storm scared them. Maybe because they had lived on the lake their entire lives, they knew how dangerous this storm was. In a panic they woke Jesus up. “Lord, save us! We are going to drown!”

In words that contrast with what Jesus said about the Roman centurion’s faith (Matthew 8:10), Jesus says to his disciples, “Why are you afraid, why do you have such little faith?” And with that Jesus stills the storm so effectively that there is a dead calm. Now the disciples have a bigger problem – the person in the boat with them had the power to stop the storm that had them frightened for their lives – who then is this that is in the boat with them? Jesus is more awe-inspiring, more powerful than the storm they had been afraid of.

We are more like the disciples than we may want to admit. Yes, we will follow Jesus, but when a storm hits our lives, we panic, failing to realize that the one with us in our boat, in our lives, is greater than the storm. That does not mean the storm is not serious, the storms of life are serious, but we face those storms with someone by our side who is greater than the storm, and therefore we can follow Jesus’ instructions: “Do not be afraid.” 

PRAYER:

O Lord, we thank you that you are in our boat, with us. We thank you that you are with us in the storms of life. Shape as people who live by your command, “Do not be afraid.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.