Tonight is the first time that Dover has had any kind of precipitation in a long time. We've had a Hurricane scare, and a few heat lightning storms (is there such a thing as heat lightning? I've heard "yes" and "no." answer appreciated) but no rain.
Tonight, God was determined to shake things up a little bit. On my way home from a youth group meeting, I was able to witness - safely of course - some cool lightning strikes while I was driving home. It was one of those nights where riding with the windows down was not only refreshing, but almost necessary….like I needed to feel the cool fall air rush into my car.
I stopped and parked just outside of the Laundromat near my house to check something online. The Laundromat has free wireless, and my cozy little apartment is void of anything internet. While I was sitting there, in my car, windows rolled down, I was able to experience thunder, lightning, wind….and RAIN. It was phenomenal.
I remember my dog, Buddy, being terrified of Thunderstorms when he was a young dog. His tail would wide between his legs and he would slink around, between crashes of thunder. Sometimes, storms are no joke. Tonight was pretty mild, but had the wind kicked up a little bit and the rain come down a touch harder, it could have been pretty nasty.
I've been listening to a guy named Judah Smith (www.thecity.org) ever since I returned from a conference in South Carolina where this guy spoke. I've looked up some of his sermons recently. In one, he speaks on Mark, Chapter 4 where Jesus just got done teaching to a buttload of people….and was probably tired and needed some sleep. He and his disciples popped in a boat and Jesus, like any normal dude after he's done working, passes out on the trip.
A raging storm - I'm imagining nasty winds and high seas...like that movie "White Squall" from 1980-soemthing. The disciples are a lot like Buddy, tweaking out, tails between their legs. They didn't know what to do, so they woke up Jesus. But when they woke him, they didn't just straight up ask him for help. They didn't beg him to work His "Jesus Magic" and quell the mighty sea that they were so struggling with. "They said to him, 'teacher, do you not care that we are parishing?"
At a quick glance, I guess it seems kind of weird, doesn't it? If your life was flashing before your eyes, don't you think you'd cry out for help first and then ask stupid questions like "God, do you really care?" But here, the disciples waste no time being idiots. Kind of sounds like me, sometimes. I never understand the argument people make when they say that the Bible isn't relatable. Psh…. You say it isn't relatable? I think the disciples and I are related. Check out all the stupid stuff I do and say on a regular basis. Then check out how much stupid stuff they did on a regular basis.
Pretty sure those figures are in the same ballpark.
I know the storm thing is cliché, but lets take this from another angle.
Storms come at different times….in different manors, and when we least expect it. Sometimes, I feel like Christians are holding out for the storms. They brace themselves for the storms. They believe that they need storms in their lives to justify themselves as Christians because it's only through storms that they can learn things, and work through things. What a croc. I don't think that anywhere in the Bible, God says, "I'm going to send you storms so that you can put it all together."
God is all about the good, not the bad. I don't think he's up there on His throne picking out different scenario cards...mixing and matching people and problems. That doesn't sound like a God of Love to me. God works for the good of all things.
BUT, storms do happen. It's no secret. It's no surprise, either. I think those disciples are actually a good representation of Christians today. Our prayers that should go something like, "God help!" turn into, "God, do you really care?" or "God, why is this happening?"
-"God, why is my relationship with my girlfriend or spouse going down the tubes? Are you here with us? Do you care about us?
-"God, why does my congregation keep dwindling down and down? Don't you care?"
-"God, why is my friend sick? Don't you know that I need him? Don't you care?"
Reality check. We are more like the disciples than we care to admit. Sometimes, our faith gets swept away by the wind. The wind whispers to us that we aren't enough. Or that we have no faith, or that we've failed….or that we're not loved, respected, or wanted.
When our faith leaves, we forget that Our Savior talks to the wind. He talks to the sea. He talks to the storm. He has the ultimate trump card. More importantly, He is always in the boat.
Maybe the struggle here is about faith and about listening to the call Jesus has on your heart. But maybe deeper still is the struggle for us to just stay in the friggen boat. When the waves crash over the side of your vessel and the wind pounds you to the deck, sometimes the boat seems like a sucky place to ride out the storm. There's that feeling that abandoning ship is the safest thing to do. If you jump out, you can swim back to shore and start over.
What we don't realize is that if we keep jumping out of the boat and swimming back to shore, we will always swim back to where we came from. We never get to where we want to go. Where we need to go. Where we are supposed to go.
Does that take a friend sometimes? Sure. We always need people to hang out in that boat with us. When we have one foot hanging over the side and one foot in, we can always use someone to convince us to hang on. Stay in. Just keep holding on.
Until we understand who we have in the boat with us, we'll always have one foot out over the edge. Even when we don't have the courage or the wisdom to stop letting the wind wisp our faith away, He calls out to it and tells it to stop blowing, so that the waves stop rolling. The weather and our vision becomes more clear. Then, we can see who stands beside us.
I'm glad it stormed tonight.
