Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Storms:

I have been working on the end of Mark 4 for the message Sunday. The Apostles were worn out and it was night. A storm came up while the band was crossing the Sea of Galilee--really a lake. I don't think life-jackets had been invented yet. The boat was about to swamp.
"Don't you care that we are about to die?" the distraught disciples cried out.
I have felt the wind and the sting of the rain over the last few days. One of the healthiest men I know--or so I thought--had a heart attack while doing a stress test at a hospital. Another friend's first great-grandchild was born into pediatric intensive care unit. A friend with whom I worked and served for years--he helped raise my kids and I his--was in a head-on and currently is in an ICU (Thankfully the prognosis is optimistic.)

Lord, don't you care?

Yes. He does!

On that night two millennia ago the Lord stood up in that little gale-ravaged craft and said, not to the men, but to the howling wind and tossing water, "Hush, be still." And it did. Time and again over my nearly four decades of being privileged to minister God's word in times of crisis, I have watched the storms subside by the God's grace. Sometimes they last more than a night, but I have never doubted God's care.

Like those guys, I still ask myself, "Who then is this, that even the wind . . . the sea [the damaged cardiac muscle, the fractured bone, the heart broken by love gone bad, the hand of the surgeon, the touch of a nurse, and voice of the yielded counselor] obey Him?" (Mark 4:41)

My answer is the same as Marks.
He is the Lord! Trust in no one else.

It's STTA.

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