Some Storms are too big for us to handle
“I don’t like lightning.”
My daughter eyed the gathering darkness from her car seat. The sky was studded with clouds. Even though no storm had started, she could feel it coming.
“I don’t mind the thunder. You remember those big booms?”
“Yes,” I nod.
I knew the night she was picturing. We had huddled on a porch in the desert when veins of light cracked the night. For a split second, the horizon glowed, revealing arid hills around a placid lake. Then it was dark, water and sky fused back together while we listened to the thunder.
Over and over again. Wondering whether the lighting would ignite tinder dry ground.
I pulled into the intersection.
“The booms are okay,” she continued. “But the lightning looks like it’s breaking the whole sky.” Her brow furrowed. “And I’m scared no one will be able to fix it ever again.”
My answer caught in my throat. I nodded and blinked back tears. If you have stood in that kind of storm, you know that some storms split more than the sky. And fear fills up what is left.
Fear can skitter over my soul in a storm, uninvited but automatic. Fears of being powerless, Inadequate. Alone. Fears of failure and disaster and ruin. Of being unloved. Of losing control.
And underneath that is another fear: that we might be doing this all wrong to begin with. Because we are not supposed to be afraid. The Bible is full of reminders of God’s presence and sovereignty, telling us of a God who splits seas and hangs stars and reminds us not to fear. But those words can feel cruel when we are drowning, like a megaphone from the sky reminding us that we are broken – failing in the storm and failing at faith.
I get it. I know what it is to be tired. Tired of waking up with tears already streaming down my face. Tired of choking back sobs in the frozen aisle while shoppers picked their way around me. Tired of self-regulating.
Take three deep breaths.
Name three things you hear.
Three things you feel.
One thing you smell.
One thing you taste.
Three things you see.
Tired of the suffocating work of being ok, sinking in the sea of Galilee while Jesus sleeps. And sick of being told not to fear while lightning incinerates my life.
God, Don’t you care?
I understand the question. And I am struck by the way that God recognizes this question through his story.
following jesus may mean walking into storms
The disciples asked it in the middle of a storm. They had spent all day with Jesus, watching him teach and heal. They saw him undo misery with a touch and have endless time for the crowds. They must have felt invincible with Jesus.
Then He asked them to cross the sea. And everything was fine – at first. They knew their boat and the crossing and the winds. This was the part where they were in control. Until, like a bolt of lightning, the sea ruptured. Furious and wild, an earthquake of the deep tore the night apart. This was not their first storm, so they did what they knew. They pointed their boat into the swell and harnessed the wind. They did things right. But the water kept pouring in. This storm – the one that Jesus had walked them into – was too much for them. They were going to drown while Jesus slept. And they wondered why their miracle working friend did not seem to care .
Storms make us wonder who God is and whether he cares
We get it.
We know what it feels like to follow Jesus into a hurricane that exhausts every survival mechanism. We know what it feels like to wonder why Jesus seems to be sleeping . Life batters in a way that only our own hearts really know. Storms can cause whiplash of belief. The disciples’ boat was breaking, sure. But so was their picture of Jesus. Moments before, they were confident. They knew what Jesus could do and they believed who he was. But the wind churned up doubts they did not know they had. They did not recognize this Jesus in their storm. They did not understand a Jesus who would take care of his own need for rest while they struggled and seemed indifferent to their circumstances.
Life batters in a way that only our own hearts really know, and when it does, we know what it is to cry out with the disciples: We are dying. When it does, we know what it is to ask, Jesus, don’t you care? Why don’t you do something?
Their questions are the ground note under all of mine.
Jesus seems unfeeling when he is silent in our terror. He seems uncaring when we are drowning. And He seems unfair when miracles only happen for other people.
When Jesus’ eyes finally opened, I wonder if the disciples even recognized him. I want Jesus to explain. I want him to give them a reason for why he slept. But, instead, Jesus stood, turned his face into the wind, and spoke: Peace, be still.
The storm snatched back its chaos and silence settled on the water. Familiar sea. Steady surroundings. But everything else was different.
Can you imagine their questions? All the whys tangled up with their wonder? But before the disciples could even catch their breath, Jesus turned to them with two questions of his own: Why are you so afraid? Where is your faith?
The words must have cut. If Jesus were paying attention, He would have known. If He cared, he would not have asked. His friends had just been gripped by terror, about to drown. And Jesus had let it happen. Why wouldn’t they be afraid? It seems like cruel interrogation, piling wreckage onto their ruin. They had barely survived the storm when Jesus started peeling apart their experience. His questions feel cold.
Some of us have heard these questions whisper condemnation over our own experience. We have heard platitudes from Job’s friend and disappointment in our own doubt.
Why are you afraid? becomes What is wrong with you?
Where is your faith? becomes Do you even have it?
I want to yell at Jesus and say everything the disciples do not. Where was their faith, Jesus? With you, until you went to sleep! With you, when you were doing miracles and healing the sick. Where did their faith go? Where did you go, Jesus?
This is what we want to ask, but our questions get tinged with guilt that we feel this way at all. Some of us were taught that questions were not okay and that the experience of abandonment could not be voiced. That good Christians don’t yell at God. We feel chastised by Jesus and shamed by those shadows in our own hearts. But none of that helps us know what to do with a Jesus who walks us into hurricanes and then goes to sleep. It does not help us with a Jesus who seems to abandon us in our fear. It does not bring us any closer to a Jesus who interrogates us after the storm he allowed. It is disorienting and exhausting.
Except Jesus does not ask questions for his own curiosity. He knew about the storm. He knew they were going to drown. He knew that He had slept through their terror. Jesus did not need his disciples to tell him the reasons they were afraid. But he was never asking for facts. Jesus saw through his disciples’ immediate fear to a deeper unrest. And instead of speaking peace over their hearts, condemning them for their doubts, or bypassing their experience, Jesus invited the disciples to lean into the spaces where they did not trust him. His questions asked them to look at the parts of their heart laid by the storm and listen to their fear.
I don’t want to pay attention to my fear. I want it to go away. I want Jesus to calm my heart like that storm. If he spoke me and the sea into being, shouldn’t they both settle with a word? But Jesus takes my fear more seriously than I do. He sees that underneath my fear of a sinking boat is the terror of a deeper undoing – that the Jesus I thought I knew is someone else all together. He knows how storms shake my confidence in who He is. And He is more compassionate to my heart than I am.
We may be closest to Jesus when we feel we are going to drown
The whole reason Jesus had skin on was because he knew the disciples were in more peril than they could imagine. The disciples could not understand from inside that boat that Jesus would enter a storm for them that they could never withstand. That He would take their hurricane and go under. He cared more than they could see. But when the disciples screamed at Jesus, questioning his care and his power and his goodness, he rebuked the wind, he rebuked the waves, but he did not send them away.
It’s strange that the people closest to Jesus experienced the most fear that night. The crowds who had listened to him that day did not get caught in a storm. They slept, believing what they had seen of Jesus without having their paradigms questioned. Their lives weren’t threatened. Their faith was not torn apart. It was out on the water with Jesus that things fell apart. The people following him most closely were most destabilized by the storm.
Which seems unfair.
But it is also reassuring.
Because it means that feeling like we are about to drown may mean we are closer to Jesus than we think.
Sometimes, staggering under my circumstances, I do not understand how Jesus can be in my boat. Hurricanes make more sense when I am running away from Jesus and not following him into the boat. But storms I did not want have peeled back ugly beliefs about who I am and who God is. They have shattered constructs I didn’t know I carried and dismantled the things that could really sink me. My pride. My perfectionism. My religiosity. This story reminds us that storms can come whether we are following Jesus or running from Nineveh. And not just little swells, but the kind that crash over the sides of our boats and dismantle our understanding of who we are and who God is.
The disciples did not know what questions were beneath the surfaces of their hearts until the wind came in. I don’t either. But every storm will move me into Jesus or away from him. It will not leave me still.
When the waves tear apart our hull, Jesus is not far. When we are terrified, Jesus wants more of our fear not less of it. And when the winds churn up doubts we didn’t know we carried, He asks us to look at what we’re really leaning on and what fears are underneath our feelings.
I wonder if there are depths of knowing Jesus that are only possible in a hurricane. Whether his questions are less an indictment of our faith than an invitation. Whether bolts of lightning might illuminate a new horizon.
Why are you afraid, dear one? Where is your faith, precious child? Why are you bailing out your boat with a thimble when I hold the sea in the hollows of my hands?
Every question, every storm, is a call to run to Jesus.
We will only ever meet a God who stills the sea out on the water.
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