(Just so you know, according to CNN, Mr. Kearney's condition is improving and all reports I've seen indicate that he'll make a full recovery.)
On Day 3 of the Israel trip, we'll be taking a boat ride on the Sea Of Galilee, and I was immediately reminded of the incident above when I read the next portion of the passage I posted here yesterday about an event that happened in the time of Jesus on Galilee:
22Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24but the boat was already a considerable distance[a] from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
Like Kevin Kearney, the disciples found themselves in a situation where a storm coming up caused considerable concern, perhaps even sheer terror. Perhaps the scariest thing about being in a storm is the complete lack of control that you feel; you're completely at the mercy of nature, and nothing you can do can slow it down.
I've been there, and I'm sure you have, too--maybe not from a literal storm, but definitely from the storms of life. Sometimes we get in stormy situations of our own creation: we make a bad decision and face the consequences. Pretty straightforward. I'm glad that Mr. Kearney is going to be ok, but let's be honest: kite-surfing in a tropical storm probably wasn't the best idea that he's ever had. (And that's not to pick on him; I've made some worse decisions than his. I'm just fortunate that none of mine have wound up on the national news and/or YouTube.) Other times, though, we end up in a storm that's not of our own doing. Someone at work doesn't take care of their end of the job, leaving you holding the bag and staring at a 16-hour day to clean up someone else's mess when you've got other pressing things going on at home. You find out that a person you love hasn't loved you the way you thought they should have. Any number of storms come up that aren't "our fault." We just stumble into them.
And then there's this one. It's a little uncomfortable for me, to be honest. Catch that first part again:
Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him...
Yup. The disciples were doing exactly what God had told them to do. They were "in God's will," as some might call it. They were being obedient to their Master. And still, they found themselves right smack-dab in the middle of a storm. Sure, that matches up to the theology that I have in my heard, but sometimes in my heart, I want to think that if I "do right," God will bless me. And if I "do wrong," the storms will come up. That's simply not the case, though. It's clear as a bell here that all these guys were doing was what Jesus had told them to do.
So why were they in a storm?
For myself, I'm trying to live in just a little bit of this passage at a time, so I'm really going to try not to jump ahead, so I can try to make sense of this on a global level. And what makes sense to me here is the idea that storms cause us to grow, because they force us to a place of helplessness and dependency. (Hmmmm.....I wonder if God's trying to teach me that, eh? It seems to keep coming up...) God isn't about giving me a pain-free life. He's about changing me, (and goodness knows that I need to be changed.) He's about stretching me and growing me. It's in the storms of life that I learn to give up the illusion that I'm in control, and let God take over.
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