Fear, Power, and Love in the Midst of a Storm

Jesus calms a storm of some sort in all four gospels. In three of the accounts, the disciples are afraid during the storm, but terrified after the storm in calmed. These are two different words, the second being a much stronger fear.

Why? We can understand the fear during a storm, but after "there was a great calm," the disciples in the boat become terrified - it doesn't add up. There is a hint in Mark's account when the men ask one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"

They were struck with such great fear because they realized that Jesus was more frightening than the storm.

The storm is scary, but you can manage it in many ways: adjust the sails, bail out water, move and shift weight. The fishermen had survived storms before by just adjusting and bowing to the threat of Nature.

But you cannot manage Jesus. He demonstrated in calming the storm, that he had power and dominion over it. If he can make a stormy sea smooth as glass, what else is this guy capable of?

Jesus is unmanageable. His power is limitless.

Seemingly, our storms (metaphorically and literally) have infinite power to wreck our voyage. But perhaps the more frightening reality is that there is a Master of the Storm.

Or not?

What the disciples spent the rest of their lives doing was discovering that the storm doesn't love them, God does. And when you have the option to bow to nature or bow to God, the option is clear: go with Love. So even though Jesus' power is limitless, his love is as well.

"His power is unbounded, but so are his wisdom and his love."
-Dr. Timothy Keller, King's Cross pg. 54

So often people criticize belief in God because they can't believe the magnitude of God's power matched with what they see of this world (death, disease, disasters). How can he allow it? What they forget is that equal with his mighty power to instigate good and allow evil, is his Mighty Love and Wisdom. He not only knows better, he loves better.

We know his love to be limitless because we see the historical event of Jesus coming into the storm of humanity, involving himself with suffering and going through the destruction of the cross in order to bring us the peace and still waters of a life in God's acceptance. And that is the love that should cast out fear.