ARK - Give Me An R!

If Mrs. Noah were to continue to reflect on her ARK cruise she might say:

Remember, as you sail on in your spiritual adventure, to ask God to calm the storms.

Jesus often used boats to preach from and to journey back and forth across the Sea of Galilee which was actually a lake much smaller than Lake Erie. The disciples were pretty used to these boats and the sea. Most of them were fishermen. But as they traveled with Jesus, they often forgot to pack their sense of adventure.

On one particular occasion, they were in the middle of the lake when a great wind blew up. Apparently this was a problem in this area and even though the lake was small, a gale would really toss those boats around. It started to get swamped.

Let’s get the full picture. The sky is dark. It’s probably lightning and thundering. The rain is whipping them in the face and the waves are washing over the boat. But there’s Jesus—sleeping in the back of the boat.

Finally, someone gets his nerve up to quit bailing and wake Jesus up. I’m wondering if the disciples woke him up to get him to help bail.

Someone pushes a cup in his direction and yells, “Don’t you care if we drown?”

Jesus gets up, looks around at the wind and the waves and yells out, “Quiet! Be still!”

For just one moment, I’ll bet those disciples thought he was yelling at them.

But then the wind calms and the waves recede and all is at peace again. And Jesus asks them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

Faith is key to any spiritual adventure. There was a time when I, like the disciples, was asking God the same question: Don’t you care?

The year was 1984. Like Mrs. Noah life had been pretty good to me. Sixteen years earlier I had married the man I love and we started a family. We enjoyed our church activities, his career took off—as did mine as a homemaker, a PTA activist, and a mother. After three boys, we decided to adopt to get our girl. She came with a brother and that brought the total of little mouths to feed to five. We were a happy group.

And then life happened.

It started with the sudden death of my mother then my infant niece. Like the disciples, I questioned whether God cared. It took a long journey of faith building before I finally realized that I needed to turn to him and ask him to calm the storms of life. It was a hard lesson to learn but when other storms came, I remembered to turn my face to him and ask for calm.

In all of your trials, your journeys of life, in all of your spiritual adventures, remember God’s grace and in all the storms of life, take refuge in Him.