Reflection during Storm Dirk

What sort of man is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.

By Joanne Mead

As I write this, the United Kingdom is being battered once again by a severe storm, this one is called ‘Storm Dirk’.  Two people have already lost their lives, more have suffered damage to home or business.  The media takes great delight in putting reporters in exposed places to let us know how awful the conditions are, as if we cannot see that for ourselves.  People’s travel plans are disrupted, trees uprooted and homes damaged.  The reports reminded me of the very first public Bible reading I ever did in church at our annual Sunday School service.  It was from Luke 8 and was the story about Jesus calming the storm.  Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, which was and still is very susceptible to sudden, violent storms.  Jesus was asleep and as the waves washed over the boat, the disciples began to fear for their lives.  Jesus wakened up, calmed the storm and then queried why the disciples were afraid.  Where was their faith?  I could just imagine the look on those poor disciples’ faces when Jesus responded in that way.  It must have been one of complete amazement.  How could he say that?  What sort of man was he? Even the wind and the waves obeyed him.

What sort of man was he?  The disciples didn’t understand Jesus - and if you read through the four Gospels, time and time again you find accounts of the disciples failing to grasp his message.  It isn’t until they receive the Holy Spirit that they can begin to understand all that he has told them.  They spent approximately three years with Jesus during his ministry and he always puzzled them.  They weren’t alone, for the Pharisees also found it hard to understand who Jesus was too.  They treated him with suspicion and they would eventually demand his execution on a Roman cross.

We do not experience Jesus like the disciples did, and I’m sure we all have times when we struggle to really understand what he’s all about.  He seems to turn everything on its head with his parables about the first being last and the last first.  He ministered to those the society of the day rejected as worthless, and most of all, he changed lives.  Some people find his way of living a tough call - after all, society dictates that we are seen with all the right people, that we wear the right clothes and equip ourselves with all of the right gadgets and accessories.  What about the people our society rejects as worthless?  How do we respond to them?  It’s so easy to just put a few coins in a charity collection box and think that is enough, it’s so easy to jump on the bandwagon of political correctness when what Jesus demands that we love one another as he first loved us.  It means welcoming the whosoever of John 3:16 into our midst and loving them regardless of our society’s stereotypes.  It means reaching out into the not-so-nice areas of town and making the person of Jesus real to them through our actions.  It means allowing Jesus into our hearts, only then can he bring calm to our stormy lives.