Asleep in the Storm

(Mark 4:35-41)

It had been a long, long day, and Jesus was tired.

So when evening came, he climbed into a boat with his friends, and they pushed out onto the wide dark water. "Let's go across to the other side," he said. Then he lay down in the back of the boat, with his head on a little cushion, and he fell fast asleep.

Jesus got tired the same way you do. He had a real body and a real face and real, heavy eyes.

While he slept, the wind began to blow.

Not a soft wind. A wild one. It came tearing down over the water and whipped it into great gray waves, taller than a man. The waves crashed over the sides of the boat. Water poured in, cold and fast and rising.

The friends pulled at the ropes. They scooped with their hands. But the boat filled up and up, and they could not stop it.

They were soaked and shaking and certain they were going to drown.

And Jesus was sleeping.

They could not believe it. They shook him awake, and the words tumbled out of them, sharp with fear: "Teacher! Don't you care that we're drowning?"

It is the loneliest question in the world, the one you ask in the dark when everything is going wrong and no one seems to hear. Doesn't anybody care?

Jesus stood up in the rocking boat.

He looked at the howling wind. He looked at the towering waves. And he spoke to them the way you might speak to a child who has cried long enough.

"Hush," he said. "Be still."

And the wind stopped.

All at once. The waves lay down flat. The water went smooth as glass. It was so quiet you could hear the drip, drip of water off the ropes, and the soft slap of the calm sea against the boat.

The friends stood very still, their hearts pounding, because they knew something now, something almost too big to hold.

Who is this? Who can do this?

Long before, at the very beginning, a voice moved over the dark and roaring waters. The voice said let there be, and there was. Only One has ever spoken to the sea and had the sea go quiet: the Maker, the same voice that scooped out the deep and told the waves where to stop.

And that One was here in their boat, tired, with his head on a cushion, close enough to touch.

He slept because he was not afraid of wind or water or anything else on earth. He had come right down into the storm with his friends, into the smallest boat on the wildest sea, so that when they cried out, the One who could save them was already there.

So when your own storm comes, and the water is rising, and you are sure that no one cares, remember the boat. The same One is near, nearer than you think. He has come down into it with you. And he has never once been afraid of the dark.