By Amy Whiting“Jesus, however, was asleep on a cushion”
The followers of Jesus find themselves in a situation where they are out of their depth, out of control and scared for their lives – once safe and familiar territory (many of them were fisherman for a living) now dramatically changes...and Jesus who invited them there in the first place (vs35)...is asleep on a cushion!
Tom Wright so beautifully expresses this dilemma all followers of Jesus experience: that we believe on one level in a God who is “all-seeing, never-sleeping, omnipresent and omnicompetent – but who, at another level, seems, from the perspective of our muddled and messy lives, to have gone to sleep on the job.”
So they (and we) cry out desperately in our moments of fear – Jesus awakes, silences the storm, then drops the big question: “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?” (vs 40) To which the followers of Jesus reply “Who is this?”
As many of the other blog writers have already observed – Jesus and the Kingdom He is instigating operates in a radically different way to what we know and understand as “normal” - part of following Him is having our “minds and imaginations challenged, opened, stretched and re-shaped”
That when we cry God – “wake up” that is the moment where we may find ourselves awakened to who He really is in a way we didn’t expect.
Prayer:
“Wake us up, O Lord, from our easy-going sleep. Help us always to remember that you are in control, no matter how frightening or alarming things may be.”
No comments:
Post a Comment