A little over a week ago, I participated in a Visio/Lectio Divina exercise utilizing Mark 4:35-40 and this picture:
This is a passage that has always piqued my interest, but to be honest, I was never quiet enough to let the Scripture speak to me. I just read it for information’s sake, and kept on going. But on this particular day, I had enough time to be able to sit with the text, and allow it to speak to me.
It’s a familiar passage – the one where Jesus and the disciples get in a boat to cross the lake, which they seemed to do a lot, and a storm blows up. Jesus, exhausted from ministry, is sound asleep in the stern. Asleep. While the boat is swamping, disciples are yelling at each other in fear and frantic survivor activities, rain is lashing, and the waves are tossing the boat like a cork. The disciples wake Jesus up, and their question to him smacks of irritation, perplexity and even anger. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” I hear a lot of angst in that question. This is an “all hands on deck” situation, and Jesus is not carrying his own weight. He’s sleeping while everyone else is rowing, baling water, and tying down sails. I think the question might have sounded a whole lot like, “JESUS!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?!!! WAKE UP AND HELP!!”
So he does. He wakes up and rebukes the wind and waves. Now, the pictures of our Sunday School youth have him standing majestically on the prow of the boat holding out his hand to the wild storm and shouting at it to be still. But the text doesn’t even say that. It says, “he awoke and rebuked the wind…” I’m not even sure he got up. I can imagine him lying there on his soggy cushion, bleary-eyed from tiredness, taking a second to assess the situation, and instantly solving the problem while reclining in the stern.
But that is not the fascinating part. What has always intrigued me is what happens next. Jesus stops the wind and calms the sea, then looks at the disciples and asks them why they were so afraid. “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'” They are dumbfounded. They don’t even know how to respond to Jesus’ question. They are just struck with fear and murmur to each other. I can just see Jesus settling back on his pillow and falling back asleep while the disciples are all perplexed about what just transpired.
But wait – YOU woke him up! YOU are the ones who wanted him to do something. What did you want him to do exactly?? Well, clearly not THAT! So, if they weren’t waking him up to take care of the problem, why were they waking him up? What were they expecting out of him? To help row? Grab a bucket and bail water? Batten down the hatches? I think so. These guys clearly had NO expectation that he was actually going to stop the storm itself. They just wanted him to share equally in the suffering and work. And Jesus is a little dumbfounded at THAT! “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” Or maybe more colloquially, “You still don’t get it, do you??”
No. They don’t. Here are the disciples, with the Creator of the universe IN. THEIR. BOAT., and they are asking him to wake up – and row.
Think about that. This is why Jesus is confused, and maybe a little annoyed. You’re about to die. The sea has turned on you. The One who made the sea is lying in your boat, and he’s your friend. And you are mad at him because he isn’t getting up to row? Maybe your questions are all wrong.
Maybe if Jesus wasn’t so tired (and wet), he would have walked them through a debrief of the incident later. I imagine it would have gone something like this:
Jesus – “As you think about what was happening, and the resources literally at your feet, what might have been a more appropriate question?”
Peter – “Maybe, ‘Umm, Jesus, could you please wake up and say something to your sea before it eats us for lunch?'”
(Because really guys… you just asked the Creator of EVERYTHING to get up and row the boat??)
Well, don’t get too
In the days following this exercise, the Lord has continued to pose that question to me. “Kim, Who is in your boat?” Because as we did that exercise, and in the days that followed, I was pondering the place where we find ourselves in ministry. Women of Hope is at a crossroads. A tipping point of sorts. Kind of a “go big or go home” moment. We’re approaching our 10th anniversary, and I am pretty blown away at all that God has managed to do with our tiny little team and meager resources. We operate a multi-national ministry with phenomenal worldview shifting outcomes, with 2 full-time offices, and 18 personnel, on a $340,000 annual budget. I don’t say that out of pride, believe me. Nobody can do that except God. And if I feel anything about that, it is more likely akin to shame, because I know the struggles we have endured because of inadequate finances and feel like there must have been something we could have done differently to increase that. And as we step into a new decade of ministry, there is
As we sat in that Visio exercise a couple of weeks ago, I knew the Lord was looking directly into my eyes as I shook his sleeping shoulder, and asking me, “Kim, you have the Creator of all things, the Owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, IN your boat, and you are asking me for what??? Didn’t I say to you that we should get in this boat and set off for the other side? And you see me here with you as a source of help, but what are you asking me to do exactly? Stop being afraid, and think with more Truth, and trying asking again. Don’t you get it yet?”
What about you? What’s your storm? What’s assailing you and leaving you rocked and shook? What’s threatening to swamp your boat? Well, friend, WHO is in your boat?? Think about Who He is, and don’t ask Him to help you row out the storm. Ask Him for something that’s more within His pay grade.