The QuestSample

Read Matthew 8:23-27.

If your imagination is not wet-faced with lake water, if it is not weak-kneed, white-knuckled, or seasick, you may need to go back and read the segment again.

Knowing a story turns out well can have a terrible way of taming it. 

Violent storm. The kind that can kill you. The kind that can bring professional sailors to the end of their ropes and capsize a virile man’s boat like it’s a little boy’s toy. Wind so loud you can hardly hear what the person inches from you is yelling. Waves crashing over the side, making a pool of the hull. The boat tilts severely to the left. Another wave. The wind punches the sails like the enormous fists of mythical gods, tossing you into your shipmates like a cosmic game of pick-up sticks.

And Jesus is sound asleep.

Notice the peculiar order. Jesus didn’t calm the sea first then ask the question. He asked the question then calmed the sea. The most baffling juxtaposition of their postures may be that He didn’t bother to get up to ask the question. He asked it, then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea.

His question to the disciples is our fourth recalibrating inquiry. Take time to recall it in the short form we established on Day One. Why are you afraid?

Part of changing our view of the landscape on the faith-quest is dealing with fears that threaten to paralyze us or roll us up on the roadside in the fetal position. Our fears may differ, but it’s likely no one is afraid of nothing. However, in some strange ways fear’s relentlessness can backfire.

The realization that fear, if accommodated, would know no bounds can either push us down or push us into pushing back like a small kid punching a big bully in the gut. 

God’s words to Cain in Genesis 4:7b may have a familiar ring. Fear crouched at my door. Sin did, too, of course, but perhaps our first step to freedom is becoming cognizant of copious sins that stem from our fears. Fear’s desire was for me. The word welcome on my doormat began to take on a question mark. What would I welcome in? What would I refuse? Fear crouches, ready to pounce. Will we let it eat us alive?

God bids His follower to give no place to fear.