Mark 4:38-40

"And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"
Mark 4:38-40


This is an intriguing lesson on faith.  A hard one too, at least to me.  Things go wrong often in life, and it seems easy to become fearful.  I like these verses because they seem to me to be saying that there is never any reason to be afraid.  Just like all the scriptures that talk about "all things" working together for our good, Christ seems here to be perfectly confident that everything will be fine, and seems to calm the storm just to cheer up his friends. :)  Little tiny things go wrong for me, and I wonder if I turned the wrong way and destroyed the ideal course of my life. :)  So, God calms the storms for me as well sometimes... but always, as in this scripture, he encourages faith as a better way to solve the problem.  Whatever scares us in this life, whether it is a physical storm or other storm of life, there is no reason at all to be afraid... God is in charge.  Even death can't touch us, for we only move on to another stage of our eternal lives.  And even though we know that... it is still hard to trust.  Hard to accept whatever comes with equanimity.  And so we learn.  And we learn just the way that the disciples did here.  We see an example.  Something goes wrong, we get scared, and God solves the problem.  The next time, the same thing happens.  Eventually, we start learning.  That God is always there... that he always solves the problems.  That no matter the storms that we have to weather, in the end a calm always returns, and the ship never sinks.  That no matter how inconsistent we are, God always keeps his promises.  The faster we learn, the less scary life gets... so here's to learning. :)