“’Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?’” (Mark 4:40)
That question that Jesus poses here is one that He poses to each of us at sometime or another. In these days of violence and chaos, perhaps it is one which He is asking a lot of believers. We are fearful of disease especially the scourge of COVID. We are fearful of the violent anarchists across the world as well as the social upheaval that is changing our world. We are fearful over the rise of evil and corruption in our national and local governments. We are fearful of climate change. But Jesus is in the boat with us.
In the storm at sea we see a graphic image of Jesus’ power over the forces of nature. This storm that hit the small fishing vessel must have been an extremely intense gale for it caused great fear to fall on men who were experienced sailors. It must have been as fierce as the hurricane force winds many of us in the experienced in the past years. These terrified us with their intense destructive force, so that we cannot really fault those fearful men because we know some of what they went through. And yet, they had seen Jesus recently perform some spectacular miracles and should have had at least an inkling of what He was capable of doing.
The Lord’s power over the natural forces in the world should certainly be a great encouragement and an enormous relief to us. If Jesus can control the weather then we really should realize that He certainly has the power to help us in our lives today. But we often doubt, especially when we listen to the alarming predictions from the media, the government, and the scientific community.
We often fail to have faith in Jesus when we are in the midst of life’s storms. We call out to the Lord to save us, yet we are afraid of the dangers and the pain. The Lord understands what we feel but He wants us to know that nothing will overtake us that He cannot enable us handle. He will forgive our doubts. He will encourage and enable us to carry on. He will never condemn our weakness the way some of our fellow human beings do, but will help us always to persevere. He is right there in the middle of the storm with us.