Word to the Wise
Saturday, January 27, 2007 - Third Saturday in Ordinary Time
[Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 and Mark 4:35-41]They were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?"
In 1988, I went with my dad to the Holy Land. Part of the tour was a boat ride from Capernaum (town where Jesus resided) to the place where our hotel was. The wind came up pretty suddenly and the lake got quite choppy. I thought about the several mentions of a storm in the gospels. However, if professional fishermen were getting scared, the storm must have been pretty strong. How could anybody sleep with a boat tossing and filling with water? Probably only someone who was pretty sure of the situation! One wonders what would be more alarming: the storm or somebody who can just say to a storm, "Shut up!" and it stops! I know I have asked the question at a couple of points in my life, "Teacher, do you not care that I am perishing?" I'm not sure I got the same response, although I probably thought about how strong my faith was going to be. Obviously I am still alive to tell about it. We can always "wake up" Jesus and ask him to bail us out, but we'd better be ready to accept his question about our faith. No matter what, I try to remember the words on a plaque I gave a friend once: "Sometimes the Lord calms the storm, and sometimes the Lord lets the storm rage and calms his child!" AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
57 ms
4
